【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Boy Scouts 2019年专辑《Free Company》(自由陪伴）
搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：JenniferC
校对：Lynn Liu
推送：Lynn Liu
Music briefly deserted me last year after a boy kicked my heart in the ass. No song was capacious enough for all that I felt. Not a fists-in-the-air empowerment anthem, not a fuck-you punk tirade, not even a gently masochistic ballad. Obviously, the happy stuff was out, too: the grand swoon of Wolf Parade that had scored my daydreams; the Taylor Swift hook he sang to me that one afternoon, our legs swinging from the highest platform of a children’s playground. It was a little like that stage of grief where food turns to cardboard on your tongue. Nothing tastes good; nothing sounds good. You starve; you sit in silence.
去年，一个男孩儿伤透了我的心，此后我的音乐世界一片荒芜。无论是激情澎湃的颂歌还是叛逆冗长的朋克，甚至连温柔虐心的民谣也不能抚慰我的心灵。而且，一切的欢愉也弃我而去：我不敢回想，那时在 Wolf Parade的演唱会上我如痴如醉，做着快乐的白日梦；我不敢回忆，那天下午我们俩坐在游乐园高高的平台上，快乐地甩着腿，他给我哼着 Taylor Swift的歌。我很难过，所有的食物都味同嚼蜡。对于我来说，没有馋人的美味也没有动听的乐音，因此我的世界饥饿无比，一片寂静。
Free Company is an album I wish I’d had last autumn. Taylor Vick, an Oakland songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who performs as Boy Scouts, has made a generous and gorgeously empathetic chronicle of the aftermath of love. Through sunny arrangements and spare songwriting, Vick compresses the dust of her romantic disappointment into a glittering jewel. She loves the subject of her songs, but she loves herself, too—loves herself more, enough to step away and carry on, alone, with her head held high.
如果去年秋天就有《 Free Company》这张专辑，那该多好啊。Taylor Vick(艺名Boy Scouts），这位精通各种乐器的奥克兰作曲人，按时间顺序为我们呈递了一段丰富曼妙的罗曼史，展现了爱之伤痕。这张专辑编曲轻快明媚，词曲慵懒惬意， Vick借助音乐，一扫爱情中的失意与阴暗，并把它们重新熔铸成一颗钻石，熠熠生辉。她深爱着前男友，还给他写歌——不过，她更加自爱，她的自爱让她重新爬起来，昂首挺胸，独自大步向前走。
Though Boy Scouts’ backing tracks are hazy and dreamlike, calling to mind tour mate Jay Som, Vick’s writing is direct, sharp, more bee-sting than butterfly. Free Company lulls the listener with short sentences and single syllables, until a tripwire of a lyric—“And now you’re mad at me/And I’m no longer twenty-three”—sends you sprawling headfirst into her perspective. Like the prose of Sally Rooney, Vick’s lyrics explore the vast complexity of human emotion by reveling in the simplicity of its expression. The indelible chorus of “All Right,” for instance, makes a meal out of a mere eight words: “I’m all right, I swear/I’m all right, how dare you?” In a song that explores weighty, existential questions—the existence of heaven, the permanence of souls, the mortifying ordeal of being known—Vick’s verbal economy keeps her feet planted firmly on the ground.
Boy Scouts音乐的背景音朦胧又梦幻，和Jay Som一个风格，仿佛她们俩就是灵魂挚友。Vick的歌词犀利直接，就像蜂针扎在心上。《 Free Company》的歌词简短，音节简单，但一句“And now you’re mad at me/And I’m no longer twenty-three（你现在对我不耐烦了/我也不再只有二十三岁了）一下就能触发内心的情感，让你立马陷进她的经历中。和Sally Rooney的散文诗一样，Vick的歌词试图通过简练的言语摸索人类复杂的情感。其中的一段合唱深入人心：“I’m all right, I swear/I’m all right, how dare you?（我发誓我很好/我真的很好，你怎么能这样？）”有一首歌还探讨了一些沉重的存在主义问题——天堂是否存在？灵魂是否永恒？以及自我存在被认知后的窘迫。Vick简洁精炼的语言让她脚踏实地，牢牢扎根。
This is not Vick’s first album as Boy Scouts. Her substantial Bandcamp output stretches back nearly a decade, studded with bedroom recordings and borrowed instruments. (On 2016’s “Homeroom Breakfast,” she offers endearing thanks to “rosie’s piano,” “scott’s guitar,” and “ben’s bass.”) What is clear in the arc from those records to this one are Vick’s substantial gifts not only as a writer, but as an editor. A throwaway line from “Homeroom Breakfast”—“Everything great has an expiration date”—resurfaces on “Free Company,” sharpened to a sad, subtle point in the service of a stronger song. A kind of emotional editing is evident, too. Vick has always contended, in her music, with rejection and resentment. But on “Free Company,” the woman who once wrote, “The world doesn’t need me like the world needs you” now writes from a position of hard-won, sober self-respect. “I don’t know why you’d fall through,” she sings. “I never did for you.”
Vick化名为Boy Scouts发专辑，这也不是头一回了。大概十年前，她就开始在 Bandcamp（译者注：一个汇聚了大量音乐人和乐迷的网站）发了很多歌，都是在房间里录的，连乐器都是借来的。（在2016年的歌曲“Homeroom Breakfast（教室早餐)”中，她还特别鸣谢了“rosie的钢琴” “scott的吉他” 还有“ben的贝斯”）。而这张专辑和之前歌曲的不同点在于，这次才华横溢的Vick不仅作词作曲，还参与了编曲。“Free Company”用了 “Homeroom Breakfast”中一句不经意的歌词“Everything great has an expiration date（好东西都有保质期）”，但听起来更悲伤，更戳中心中微小的痛点，和这首情感更强的歌曲相得益彰。除此之外，我们也能看到乐曲的情感也得以加工。曾经，Vick忿忿地同拒绝、怨恨斗争，写下 “The world doesn’t need me like the world needs you（这个世界不像需要你那样需要我）”。但现在，她拥有来之不易、清醒的自尊，现在她唱的是“I don’t know why you’d fall through,I never did for you.（我不知道你为什么失败了，但我做的一切从来不是为了你。）”
The arc of Free Company is shot through with tender compassion, even for those who’ve wronged her. On marvelous opener “Get Well Soon,” she offers her best wishes—but “no balloons, ’cause they just die, too”—to a former love. She doesn’t apologize for asserting herself: “Hardly a fight when you know I’m right.” In the depths of her grief, on “In Ya Too,” she likens herself to “the desert sprawl—empty, but still forceful.” She is still adjusting to aloneness, but she is learning to love its strange rhythms, its small pleasures. On “Momentary Love,” perched in her “favorite place,” she lets her thoughts wander to an old love during a moment of solitude. The memory still makes her ache, but that’s okay, she sings: “This doesn’t keep me sane/But the views up here lessen the pain.”
即使是那些曾经伤害过她的人，Vick在《 Free Company》也对他们抱有柔情。专辑的打头曲“Get Well Soon（早点好起来）”动人无比，在这首歌里，她给前男友致以美好的祝愿——“不要像气球一样，因为它们最终也会爆裂”。但是她也从不后悔坚守自我：“如果你明白我是对的，就不会有争执了。” “In Ya Too（你也是）”展现了她内心深处的悲伤，她把自己比作“无边无际的沙漠——空无一人，但潜藏能量。”Vick还需要时间慢慢适应自己的孤独，不过她已经开始爱上孤独之中的奇妙韵律和小小欢喜了。 在“Momentary Love（短暂之爱）”这首歌中，Vick独自坐在她“最爱的地方”，思绪流连于旧爱之中。回忆过去，她的内心仍旧隐隐作痛。但没关系，就像她唱的那样：“This doesn’t keep me sane/But the views up here lessen the pain.（虽然我不太清醒，但这里的景色好歹减轻了痛苦）”。
We’ve devised no end of performative mechanisms to distance ourselves from our more unsavory emotions. But on “Free Company,” Taylor Vick dares to feel everything. Reflecting on the death of a friend, on gorgeous closer “You Were Once,” Vick sings, “I knew I’d never be the same again/I know it now and I knew it then/There is only so much you can pretend.” Vick wants her listeners to know both the fullness of her grief and the strength and spirit with which she freed herself of it. She renders each subtle swell of anger, embarrassment, and regret with something almost like gratitude, the retreat of each wave only affirming the solidity of her place on the shore.
所有人都使劲浑身解数来摆脱不良情绪，但在 《Free Company》中， Taylor Vick却敢于体验任何情绪。 “You Were Once（你已离去）”这首歌是在她好朋友去世后写的，她唱道：“I knew I’d never be the same again/I know it now and I knew it then/There is only so much you can pretend.（我其实知道我已不复往昔/那时和现在都明白这个道理/但这是唯一能伪装的东西了）。Vick想让歌迷明白，她确实很悲伤，但她精神足够强大，强大到能摆脱痛苦。她怀着一种近乎感恩的心情去体验心中涌动的每一丝愤怒、困窘和悔恨。浪潮来了但终将退去，退去的浪潮终究敌不过岸上岿然不动的她。
