Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions
As if dropping an open-hearted, intimate documentary on Netflix in January and releasing a brand new, career-high album (Folklore) during quarantine in July wasn’t enough, Taylor Swift continues her banner 2020 with a low-key concert documentary that features Swift and collaborators playing through her new album. Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, available now on Disney+, is a cosy, heartwarming experience, more so than an actual movie, but that’s a strength, not a weakness. The laidback nature of the doc, which was directed by Swift herself, perfectly represents the album’s quiet and indie-esque production.
And what a glorious album. The Long Pond Studio Sessions basically comprises the music and small segments of Swift talking about the music with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, who helped produce it. With music this good, there’s nothing to complain about. Focusing on the emotionally charged, lyric-driven songs has given them room to breathe and makes for a soothing experience.
Swift, who cut her teeth directing several of her own music videos over the past few years, is not yet a visual savant, so the imagery is fine but nothing mind-blowing. The difference really shows when comparing this to another smaller-scale concert doc that came out this year, Spike Lee’s David Byrne’s American Utopia. Swift’s shots are repetitive more often than not, but she also uses close-ups effectively and doesn’t hesitate to use a long take, really letting the music take centre stage.
It really is a visceral pleasure watching Swift and her companions perform this somber, powerful music. It’s probably the most interesting music of her career, and that is quite a high bar for an artist with a very nearly perfect track record. Across her varied music, which has ranged from pure country on her first two albums to 80’s-inspired pop on 1989 and even into hip-hop with Reputation, the commonality has been stadium-friendly music that gets people on their feet. With the exceptions of a few tearjerkers here and there, Swift’s music was guaranteed to be blasted and screamed at the top of people’s lungs. Folklore is different. Without studio pressure to make another crowd pleaser (the album was made in secret and only announced less than a week before it was released), Swift thrived and embraced songs from other people’s perspectives, an especially noteworthy turn since she’s been known for her autobiographical ballads.
Suffice to say, this is gorgeous, heavenly music that can be heard on repeat and enjoyed more with each successive listen. There are layers and layers to each song, some more ambiguous than others. The Long Pond Studio Sessions peels back a layer or two for each song and reveals the delicate process behind the songwriting that flows like a smooth stream. It gives context for some of the more hard-to-decipher songs and is sure to deepen even a hardcore fan’s appreciation of this magical album.
The best part of this album may be that it’s accessible even to music fans who aren’t into Swift. It’s so starkly different from anything else the artist has tackled that it may just woo people turned off by the high-sheen aesthetic of previous albums. The documentary helps in this department too, explaining the meaning behind a song with multiple storylines like ‘this is me trying’ or multiple songs addressing a single storyline, like the trio of ‘cardigan,’ ’august,’ and ‘betty.’
The musicians who helped Swift also deserve (and duly receive) credit for Folklore. Antonoff, who previously worked with Swift on her 2017 and 2019 albums Reputation and Lover, is an enthusiastic and infectiously joyous collaborator whose furious guitar-playing is almost cathartic. Dessner, who was brought in specifically to work on Folklore, is a quieter but no less impressive musician. His tender exchanges with Swift about tracks like Peace are revelatory in their open heartedness. And Justin Vernon, also known as Bon Iver, supplies an impossibly deep voice to the duet of Exile, one of the album’s purest delights.
The stripped-down aesthetic on this concert doc that complements the stripped-down production on Folklore makes the experience akin to an hour-and-46-minute vacation. The Long Pond Studio Sessions is calming and relaxing, sure to lower the heartbeat of anybody stressing out about anything. Eye-opening for anyone from Swift haters to casual fans to Swifties, this is an enjoyably down-to-earth peek behind the curtains on the process behind the year’s best album, and it should not be missed.
