Folk­lore: The Long Pond Stu­dio Sessions

It’s been a decid­ed­ly cin­e­mat­ic year for Tay­lor Swift, whose 2020 has so far includ­ed the release of both Miss Amer­i­cana and the con­cert film City of Lover, not to men­tion the most recent two in an unin­ter­rupt­ed streak of (so far) six self-direct­ed music videos.

In July, Swift released her eighth stu­dio album, ​‘folk­lore’, record­ed total­ly in secret along­side go-to col­lab­o­ra­tor Jack Antonoff, The National’s Aaron Dess­ner and Bön Iver’s Justin Ver­non. This month, she’s man­aged anoth­er sur­prise in the form of folk­lore: the long pond stu­dio ses­sions (low­er case Taylor’s choice), a con­cert-doc­u­men­tary hybrid in which the same crew per­forms the album live. Released Wednes­day on Dis­ney+ as part of an ongo­ing part­ner­ship between Swift and the media con­glom­er­ate, it’s her debut fea­ture in the director’s chair.

The film moves between Swift, Antonoff, and Dess­ner as they explain the songs’ ori­gins and play them at New York’s Long Pond Stu­dios. Like many things this year, the bulk of folk­lore was assem­bled remote­ly, with the trio mail­ing each oth­er files until it was time to be mixed. ​“I think it’s real­ly impor­tant that we play it,” Swift says. ​“I think it will take that for me to realise that it’s a real album. Seems like a big mirage.” A ban­dana-masked Ver­non joins them remote­ly around the 20-minute mark to per­form ​“exile,” the album’s only duet.

While Miss Amer­i­cana was chock-full of tabloid and per­son­al dra­ma, Swift has giv­en her­self the space in her own film to keep things strict­ly about the music; every­thing that comes up does so either to colour or elab­o­rate on the work itself. Each of the trio is skilled at dis­cussing their craft(s), and Swift and Antonoff are espe­cial­ly cap­ti­vat­ing in their one-on-one chats. Dess­ner, for his part, comes most alive in the studio.

Despite not phys­i­cal­ly appear­ing in the film, Joe Alwyn some­how has an even big­ger pres­ence in it than he did Miss Amer­i­cana. Swift con­firms that William Bow­ery, a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure cred­it­ed as a co-writer on mul­ti­ple songs from the album, was indeed Alwyn oper­at­ing under a pseu­do­nym. He’s appar­ent­ly a tal­ent­ed pianist with a knack for both com­pos­ing and song­writ­ing, hav­ing writ­ten the first verse and ​“entire piano part” of ​‘exile’ as well as the cho­rus of ​‘bet­ty’.

folk­lore the album was a mas­sive flex of Swift’s pow­er as an artist: it became her sev­enth con­sec­u­tive num­ber-one album, even in the absence of a tra­di­tion­al roll­out. It was also her first to come with an explic­it label – sym­bol­ic in its own way of a new chap­ter. With this in mind, Disney’s involve­ment in folk­lore the film feels sti­fling. There’s no doubt that Swift’s fans will flock to the plat­form, but she’s made a major artis­tic com­pro­mise in work­ing with a com­pa­ny that insists on mut­ing her ​‘fucks’. This mat­ters at sev­er­al points dur­ing the album, but risks ruin­ing the cho­rus of ​‘bet­ty’ in particular.

The film is nev­er­the­less a tri­umphant debut from Tay­lor Swift the direc­tor (and, we pre­dict, the first of many). What it lacks in tech­ni­cal seam­less­ness – filmed with a robot­ic cam­era, equip­ment appears in the frame at mul­ti­ple points – it makes up for in musi­cal adroit­ness and a cozi­ness that’s very wel­come as the sea­son turns.