So I know the term folk-influenced gets tossed around a lot when people talk about living things. As someone who's trying to learn a little more about music, I was wondering if someone could explain what elements specifically give the songs a folk influence? I feel like it's obvious in castle of glass, but I couldn't describe it technically. I also don't know why people say the melody at the beginning of victimized is folk-influenced at all.
I feel like a lot of it is evident in the chord progressions and melodies. A lot of songs on that album are in A minor (or in the case of Burn it Down, D Dorian which is the same key signature as A minor) and are built around progressions that can easily be played with open position chords on acoustic guitar. In addition to Castle of Glass like you mentioned, Skin to Bone was specifically cited as a song that started this way but ended up having the instrumental rebuilt using a bunch of synths and really hard-hitting beats. I think the demo version of I'll Be Gone shows some of the folk-y influence in the first portion of the song, and Roads Untraveled is probably the most notable folk-y song on the record, as it's built around an old 6/8 folk ballad chord progression that bears more than a passing resemblance to House of the Rising Sun.
The early version(s) of "Victimized" that you can hear the band playing around with in the "Living Things" documentary sounds fairly folk-influenced as well. When I first heard the song, on the album, actually, I thought it was a sea-shanty or something, ha