Taylor Swift -- Evermore

exactly, akm

My experience is—it’s hard for me to believe this album is nearly as long as Folklore, which feels like a slog from song to (good, if slightly overworked) song; whereas Evermore just flows effortlessly and lightly, it’s so loose, engaging, and delightful!

(Sorry, I’m posting too much... I didn’t expect ever to be this into a Taylor Swift album again!)

well maybe she'll release another one in four months so don't get comfy yet

So is this the PLUS to Folklore's SIGN? Or the Rise to Folklore's Black Is?

“ivy” is the standout to me on first listen

― winters (josh), Friday, December 11, 2020 12:05 AM (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can't think of another moment in her catalog that sounds quite like the last minute of "Cowboy Like Me" - the guitar, harmonica, and vocal overdubs are beautifully balanced.

that song... is perfect

"champagne problems" kinda sits on a chord progression that's similar to both "all too well" and "cornelia st." not really bothered by this bc taylor has used similar chordal patterns before

The title track is really beautiful until Justin Vernon comes in moaning halfway through it.

"I come back stronger than a 90s trend" (on "willow") is a good line, though.

No strong feelings one way or the other about the rest of the album yet.

THANK YOU I thought I was the only one who thought Vernon's vocal was intrusively big and out of place in that song (the rest of which is great)

I too am not yet a fan of the duet with Oz

Folklore’s Blue

omg the audacity

― imago, Friday, 11 December 2020 08:10 (yesterday) link

I had assumed this was self-evident, but I was making a comment about the internal relationship between these records in the context of the artist's career, not a direct comparison in terms of quality.

Folklore was obviously a new sound for Taylor, and one in which she partly abandoned the false belief that her songs should be autobiographical in order to be relatable and emotionally "true". But otherwise it felt a bit like a retrenchment of Taylor's best prior songwriting qualities, building on the strengths of songs like "Last Kiss", "All Too Well" and "New Year's Day" and deepening those strengths. In that sense, like Blue, it feels a bit like a culmination, a snapping-into-focus.

The question "where next?" is always fraught. In retrospect, For The Roses was a transitional album in a clear sense, one foot still planted in Blue's spare confessionalism and heightened clarity, and one foot tentatively reaching out into new territory both stylistic (a sprinkling of jazz instrumentation etc.) and one at the songwriting/lyrical level, all those vertiginous changes in speed and sudden rushes of narrative detail (e.g. I went to see a friend tonight / it was very late when I walked in / my talking as it rambled / revealed suspicious reasoning / the visit seemed to darken him / I came in as bright as a neon light and I burned out right there before him) as if Joni was trying now to capture more of the restless uncertainty of her own thought patterns. Joni would spend the next three albums exploring and deepening the at times almost coltish discomforts of For The Roses's songwriting with increased confidence and increasing success. But it was the first album of hers I heard so I approached those in-betweenish qualities as if they were the point (albeit that, at 14, I wouldn't have articulated any of this in these terms).

I hear in Evermore a lot of that songwriting coltishness, Taylor placing stress on the classicism of her songwriting instincts in order to fit in as much impressionistic detail as she can, to capture with increasing pointillism the trailing details of a feeling, of a moment in time. Whether this works is as a matter of opinion, and whether she's doing this deliberately we won't know unless/until she makes another doco, but it seems clear to me that this is what the songs are often doing.

booming post

I'm not hearing the FTR comparison, Tim -- not yet. FTR, for one, boasted more instrumental filigrees than previous Mitchell albums. If anything, Swift has reversed the trajectory: from FTR back to Blue on the last two albums.

Also, I don't hear much affinity with Mitchell in Swift's work generally. Matthew Jones' FB wall had an excellent exchange b/w him and Ann Power about the roots of this album and Folklore's in late '80s Carly Simon, whose sensibilities weren't particularly melodic either but whose scansion grew more complex anyway.Ts

*Ann Powers obv

Again, this is not about whether the music literally resembles Joni.

Oh I know. I just don't see the affinities.

Enjoying it, though "no body no crime" just makes me want to put on "Past The Mission."

lol wow i’m not the only one who heard that

Marjorie & Closure were my big first-listen attention-grabbers. A good friend is going through something very similar to the situation that Closure describes, so that really hit a spot.

"closure" is really something else

also i am a fan of the bon iver part in "evermore"

much as it's sort of a double-time restaging of the effect of his bridge on "exile," but i think it works, his entrance kind of feels like a rush of panicked thoughts that briefly take over the song

I like "Closure" better than anything on folklore, though I'm mystified by her accent. I might be okay with it, though. That song definitely captures a particular kind of post-breakup feeling; it feels real. I like the "beers and candles" line and also the way she delivers it.

yeah she verges on a British accent at point on that song no?

"tolerate it" and "happiness" are like getting sucker-punched right in the emotions every time

the repetition of "i haven't met the new me yet/you haven't met the new me yet" in "happiness" and the way its meaning is changed by the different contexts it appears in... "all too well"-level

I've heard my kids play "Champagne Problems" and "No Body, No Crime" so far. The former seemed to ride that super-familiar C-G-Am-F chord "Hey Soul Sister" (et al) progression a little too hard. The latter was pretty primo MOR '90s, which was OK. Looking forward to listening to the rest of it at some point.

halfway thru this

my report is: it needs to lose 'champagne problems' urgently but otherwise not bad at all, odd-numbered tracks are particularly not-bad

have finished

my report is: sags a little in the middle, claws its way back, culminating in 'marjorie' into 'closure' which is probably the best two-track run of swift imo

Here's one for ya

Niche tweet: #Folklore is the Emily album and #Evermore is the Amy album. pic.twitter.com/RSeMLFpI9c

— Dr. Karen Tongson (@inlandemperor) December 12, 2020

“ivy” is just a fucking amazing song

i always forget the bridge is coming, and then it's like

so YEAH
it's a FIRE
it's a GODDAMN BLAZE IN THE DARK
and you starrrrrrted it

oh

goddamn

i find it interesting that the subject of taylor swift's sincerity has generated so much discussion lately when this album has, like, "marjorie" on it, but i also know that this discussion has nothing to do with her actual work

Yes, and I’m glad this actual thread has been spared the reach of that discussion.

for whatever reason, the one song that has really stayed with me from these first few days with this album is gold rush, which i haven't seen discussed much... that insistent, nagging melody in the chorus! her delivery! it's so good

“gold rush“ feels like an inversion of her usual themes bc she loves describing relationships as these magnetic fields that draw attention and on this song she is outright refusing someone bc of the attention that hovers around them (but also... reluctantly? as if she’s trying to convince herself she doesn’t want it—“so inviting, i almost jump in”). love the insistent pulse bleachers bring to the track too, and the intro/coda, like they’re these watery portals in and out of the song

"gold rush" and "ivy" are both amazing, yes.

Even more than with Folklore, I think questions of autobiography/sincerity feel almost irrelevant here - yes, there's "marjorie" and "long story short" and "closure" which are (or seem) autobiographical (and interestingly are clustered together near the end), but otherwise this album feels even more focused than its predecessor on inventing fictionalised narrative frameworks that provide a testing ground for exploring ideas about interpersonal relationships and for inhabiting perspectives increasingly imbued with moral ambiguity (an ironic development for a singer who used to present as pop's most self-righteous victim).

"long story short" of course is such a witty and knowing and sly dig not just at the singer's publicly-presented life to now but also her entire songwriting approach.

otm

This is my favorite TS album since Red, by a wide margin... it’s that thing where an artist you keep up with releases a random album that fits right in your “zone,” somehow. Love that!

“ivy” is just a fucking amazing song

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Sunday, December 13, 2020 5:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah "Ivy" and "Cowboy Like Me" have been stuck in my head all weekend. Second half of this album really outshines the first, but in a way that feels more like a crescendo. Love albums that do this - take you on a pleasant scenic drive and then hit the accelerator at some point and never look back, The National's Alligator being a prime example.

yeah "ivy" is where the album really takes off

she just needs any sort of editing instinct! nobody would really miss those middle two tracks and going straight from Happiness into Ivy would just work so much better

I like "Ivy" and loooove "Long Story Short" and a few others in the front, but, damn, y'all, after spending too much time on it last weekend, I haven't been so underwhelmed by a Swift release in years: her most melodically desiccated. What a helluva streak, though: three albums in 18 months is nothing to sneeze at.

the first half of the album is relatively weak for sure, i only really like "gold rush" and "no body, no crime" before "ivy". it's never bad but that section is nowhere near as strong as folklore

"dorothea" is funny to me because it's the absolute most national-y of all the dessner collabs, it still catches me off guard when her voice comes in instead of berninger's

“tolerate it” and “happiness” are two of her very best songs ever and they are in that first block

wack opinions itt

agree with brad! albeit as someone who's much less of a fan

“tis the damn season” too!

which feels thematically to me like a sequel to "i wish you would," but more assured and precise