The singer and songwriter’s July album traded glossy sheen for an acoustic-Minimalistic palette. A second album with the same collaborators moves even further from her pop past.
Sequels are always tricky. The original is a creative leap; the follow-up is likely to be incremental. Until now, Taylor Swift has switched up her collaborators and general sound with each album. But she has rightly billed “Evermore,” her surprise-release ninth album, as the “sister” to the one she released less than five months ago, “Folklore.” “It feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music,” Swift wrote in a statement. “We chose to wander deeper in.” She continued writing songs with the “Folklore” brain trust of producers and musicians — primarily Aaron Dessner of the National, who plays most of the instruments and collaborated on 14 of 15 songs. Swift’s boyfriend, the actor Joe Alwyn, had a hand in three songs under the pseudonym William Bowery; Jack Antonoff, who also wrote with Swift on “Folklore,” worked on two. “Evermore” clings to the acoustic-Minimalistic palette of “Folklore,” with homey piano and imperturbable guitar patterns. Swift and Dessner enlisted more backup musicians for mini-orchestral arrangements by Bryce Dessner, also of the National, but for most of “Evermore,” Swift turns even further inward, away from her pop past, than she did on “Folklore,” drifting toward elegant but cerebral craftsmanship.
