Taylor Swift - Folklore

starting this. you can sure hear the Dessnerness of it all right away.

completely fucking blown away by "the 1"

this is it!!!!!!

"cardigan" is an exact Swift/LDR synthesis (the vocal phrasing!) and I like it

my brain went straight to tori

which i guess automatically makes it her best ldr synthesis

when
you
are
young
they
assume
you
know
nothing

Such an amazing song

Also lol @ "the wedding was charming if a little gauche"

wow the bridge in "exile" is great

and then it comes back again!

So she broke up with Joe, huh?

Kinda her mid/late 90s lingering-impact-of-trip-hop album to a degree, isn't it? (This is very much not a complaint.) Also given the recent Hit Parade episode on Lilith Fair I'm feeling a hair of McLachlan from around then too, and similarly not a complaint.

Listening to "The Last Great American Dynasty," and it's easy to imagine Matt Berninger singing the chorus.

"mirrorball" is soooo pretty

"A marvelous time ruining everything" is a great line that hits harder via the repetition and variation.

“august” is a cocteau twins song and it made me cry

this is the best taylor swift album and i’m not even done yet

I don't think what the Dessners and co. bring to the table really works for me tbh

yeah "august" is so much

Per jaymc, great thread re "Last Great American Dynasty"

obsessed with Taylor’s song about Watch Hill House and Rebekah Harkness.....yes queen give us a WASP history lesson, be the John Cheever you want you see in the world!!!!!!

— rachel syme (@rachsyme) July 24, 2020

It sounds very nice, but it's also hella mellow; seven tracks in, hope it picks up a bit.

(also - I'm hesitant to type this - but in "Mirrorball," when she starts to sing "You'll find me on my tallest tiptoes," it totally sounds like she's about to sing "You'll find me on my toilet...")

"Betty" is the best-sounding thing on here, figures it's the only Dessner-Antonoff-Swift co-production

I thought that too.
Which makes me wonder if its gonna be a another "lonely starbucks lovers" thing.

mellow is the dominant mood. the songcraft is out of this fucking world though

and i haven't been studying the lyrics intently but... she seems in top form here

I'm enjoying the mellowness. She's been on such a maximalist kick for so long. (Not that maximalism is absent here, it's just a gauzier variety.) I've always been a fan of mid-tempo and ballad Taylor.

(only halfway through the album but feels likely to be my favorite of hers since Red.)

Damn, she DID write a folk-metal album -- from "Invisible String"

"Cold was the steel of my ax to grind for the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents"

every melody is somehow lovelier than the last

My biggest objection to her dance-pop stuff is it tends to be too rigid to let her unfurl those long melody lines. Which she's really good at.

she keeps some of the clipped-pop delivery here but it sure works

lol at "betty" being about being in love with a girl but she makes sure there's one line that makes it clear she's playing a male role to make it straight

so none of this is gonna be played on the radio huh

seven is lovely.

"Cardigan" is being promoted to radio.

overall this is quite good, probably a few tracks longer than it needed to be but that's my only complaint

Trixie Mattel will cover "Betty" by Monday.

That modulation at the end of Betty is just *chef's kiss*.

i want a whole album of "august"s

I haven’t listened to Bon Iver since Skinny Love and that EP, does he always sound like this

no, it's rare to hear him in that lower register

"what if you just sang it in a normal voice, like a regular singer, Justin?"

— Keith Harris (@useful_noise) July 24, 2020

lol at "betty" being about being in love with a girl but she makes sure there's one line that makes it clear she's playing a male role to make it straight

well - the other characters have names, why not the narrator ("James")? it doesn't feel forced to me

piano on Cardigan is very 'Norman Fucking Rockwell'.

Cardigan is her best single since Blank Space.

it was just funny because when i first heard it i thought she'd written a gay song until the one line where she no homos it by revealing the narrator's name

'james' never made anyone less gay

Was Taylor referring to the National when she sang about that indie band in We Are Never etc

Lol if so that would be the ultimate slow burn revenge on Jake Gyllenhaal

On about the 4th time through August I realized the opening reminds me of "Life in a Northern Town." (A good thing.)

Was Taylor referring to the National when she sang about that indie band in We Are Never etc

― self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Thursday, July 23, 2020 11:13 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

unfortunately it was best coast