【搬运译】Pitchfork评Florence and the Machine 2015年专辑《大蓝美》

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：Peter D

校正：Ryan-Chopin

排版：Peter D

Florence Welch has built her career on the premise that she feels things more painfully and powerfully than anybody else. Accordingly, her band's third studio album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is one long Ophelia mad scene, a breakup record from the point of view of someone who is absolutely convinced that her breakup is the most devastating thing that has ever happened to anyone.

Florence Welch的音乐事业建立在这样一个前提上：她对事物的感知比别人都要更加痛苦和强烈。因此，她的乐队的第三张录音室专辑《How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful》就像是一出漫长的Ophelia（译者注：莎士比亚戏剧《哈姆雷特》中人物）发疯的戏剧场景，其角度所在显然是确信自己的分手会是最惨绝人寰之事，从而创造了这张分手专辑。

She makes a pretty good case for that, to be fair. "What was it that I said?/ I can't help but pull the earth around me to make my bed," she cries in "Ship to Wreck", which goes from sleeping pills to great white sharks in its first two lines. Welch has quoted producer Markus Dravs as telling her that she's "not allowed to write any more songs about water," although she appears to have dodged that dictum at every opportunity.

公平地说，她对这一点有着相当充分的理由。“我刚刚说的那是什么呀？/我无法控制自己，只能拉来大地做我的床榻，”她在“Ship to Wreck（将沉之船）”中如此哭喊道。而在这首歌一开头的两行里就从安眠药写到了大白鲨。Welch曾说制作人Markus Dravs告诉过自己“不许再写更多关于水的歌了”，但她似乎已经利用了一切机会来逃避这条要求。

These aren't just songs about heartbreak; they're songs about total and utter eclipses of the heart. "Delilah", for instance, concerns the epic psychic carnage involved in waiting for a phone call from a boyfriend, and yes, that's Delilah as in Samson. (Several songs later, she's "thrashing on the line," this time as a fish.) Over the course of the album, she also invokes (or casts herself as) Persephone, Lot's wife, the Virgin Mary, Daphne, Jonah, and St. Jude—both the saint and the European storm, alluded to in both senses in two different songs. Over "Queen of Peace"'s stomps and choir and horns, she imagines herself "dissolving like the setting sun/ Like a boat into oblivion/' CAUSE YOU'RE DRIVING ME AWAAAAAAY!" (See? Aquatic lyrics again.)

这些不仅仅是些描写心碎的歌曲，而是描写完完全全、彻彻底底的心灰意冷之音。例如歌曲“Delilah”中就讲到她在等待男朋友来电时一场发生在脑海中的史诗级大屠杀，没错，这里的Delilah就是Samson（译者注：著名圣经人物参孙）的故事中的那个Delilah。（而在几首歌之后，她又“在边界上翻来覆去”，这次是化作了一条鱼。）在整张专辑的行进中，她还引用了（或是把自己表现为）Persephone，Lot's wife，the Virgin Mary，Daphne，Jonah，和St. Jude——既是指那位圣人，也是指欧洲的那场风暴，并在2首不同的歌曲中对这两个场景都有影射。在“Queen of Peace（和平女王）”的踏步声、和声以及号声中，她想象着自己“如落日一般消散/像小舟驶入淫灭之地/因为你正在驱我离去——！”（看到了吗？又是关于水的歌词。）

It takes an alarming seriousness of purpose to pull this stuff off—the campy playfulness of Florence and the Machine's 2009 debut single "Kiss With a Fist" wouldn't do. The obvious presence lurking near Welch's current songwriting is Adele, whose "Rolling in the Deep" she has to wish she'd thought of first, but the other source of inspiration floating nearby is PJ Harvey, specifically the PJ Harvey of To Bring You My Love. (As with Harvey, there's a lot of gender-flipping in Welch's lyrics: "Mother" would be very obviously a gospel song if it were called "Father".) Welch's voice trembles and groans until she hauls herself up to the parts of her songs that she can belt out with desperate, bleating vibrato. And the arrangements on How Big are this big: lush and ornate, tinkering with their details every few seconds, cresting and crashing and cresting and cresting some more. The title track's orchestral coda is worthy of Trevor Horn's wildest fantasies.

完成这些需要有着惊人的严肃和目的性，这是Florence and the Machine 2009年的出道单曲“Kiss With a Fist（与拳相伴的吻）”中那种不太自然的戏谑所做不到的。Welch近期的歌曲写作最明显的影响来自Adele，她一定希望自己能更早一步想到“Rolling in the Deep（深渊中翻滚）”。而其他的灵感则来自PJ Harvey，尤其是“To Bring You My Love（把我的爱带给你）”中的PJ Harvey。（和PJ Harvey一样，Welch的歌词中也有不少性别转换：“Mother（母亲）”这首歌如果改叫“Father”一定会变成一首非常明显的福音歌曲。）Welch的声音颤抖着，呻吟着，知道她把自己拉到歌中的话自己就可以带着绝望和微弱的颤音引吭需要高歌的部分。就像名字中的“How Big”一样，这张专辑的编曲的确显得如此宏大：丰富而华丽，每隔几秒钟就有细节上的修修补补，爬坡再骤降，再不断继续爬坡。专辑同名曲的管弦乐尾声完美配上Trevor Horn的大胆幻想。

What really binds How Big together, though, is Welch's exceptional sense for melody. No matter how tormented these songs get, they let her show off with grand, arching vocal lines, leaping deftly across her registers. (There are going to be a lot of disappointed karaoke singers signing up for "What Kind of Man" or "Delilah", then discovering that their range is nowhere near Welch's.) This is a huge, sturdy record, built for arenas—the band is among the headliners at this year's Bonnaroo, Roskilde, Lollapalooza and Governors Ball—and it's richly and carefully enough constructed to endure the extensive exposure Welch's heartache is going to get over the course of this summer.

然而真正把整张专辑紧密结合起来的，是Welch对于旋律的卓越感知力。无论这些歌曲变得多么折磨人，它们都让Welch完美地展现出她那恢弘而磅礴的声线，在她的音区中灵活地跳动。（一定会有一大堆失望的卡拉OK歌手们试图演唱“What Kind of Man”或“Delilah”，然后发现自己音域完全够不着Welch的边。）这是一张宏大而坚实的专辑，简直像是为体育场而作——这支乐队也在今年的Bonnaroo，Roskilde，Lollapalooza和Governors Ball的领衔嘉宾行列中——同时专辑的架构也丰富、谨慎，足以承受这个夏天Welch的心痛历程与那随即而来的广泛曝光。