【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Grimes 2020年专辑《Miss Anthropocene》
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：Vivian/Lucia C
校对：Ryan-Chopin
排版：Emma.Z
Grimes’ first project as a bona fide pop star is more morose than her previous work, but no less camp. Her genuineness shines through the album’s convoluted narrative, and the songs are among her finest.
Grimes以一个真正的流行歌星身份创造的第一个项目比她从前的作品更加阴郁，但稀奇古怪的风格却没有减少。她的独特性在整张专辑的复杂叙事中闪闪发光，而其中的歌曲更能成称得上是她最好的作品之一。
In 2011, Grimes was eager to say in an interview that she had “been studying pop stars.” Since emerging 10 years ago as a DIY ingénue out of Montreal’s freewheeling music scene, Claire Boucher has become known for her experimental production that often traded discernible lyrics for otherworldly and synthetic vocal textures. The words she sang didn’t figure into what made her music so fascinating—it was how she used her vocals to mimic whalesong or aliensong, a futurist reimagining of the transfixing voices of Enya and Mariah Carey, over irresistible melodies. Yes, Grimes always wanted to be a pop star, but on her own creative terms.
在2011年，Grimes在某次采访中兴奋地说道她在“研究流行歌星”。自从10年前，这个走DIY风格的少女从蒙特利尔随心所欲的音乐界脱颖而出，Claire Boucher便逐渐以实验性的音乐制作闻名；这样的制作有着奇幻的、合成的歌声音质，即使这使得歌词不易辨别。让她的音乐那样出色的原因并不是她唱出的词句，而是她通过模仿鲸鱼或外星人达成的对Enya和Mariah Carey那样具有穿透力嗓音的未来主义重构，以及搭配歌声的让人无法拒绝的旋律。是的，Grimes一直都想当个流行歌星，但她有自己的创意。
Miss Anthropocene is Grimes’ fifth album and her first as that bona fide pop star—the result of widespread acclaim for both 2012’s Visions and 2015’s addictive and upbeat Art Angels. With this new celebrity, accelerated by her relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk, Grimes wants to talk about the climate crisis—although she doesn’t use that more accurate phrasing herself. “I wanted to make climate change fun,” she’s said in interviews and on her Instagram. Meaning, Grimes is using her preferred lenses of fantasy, villainy, and pop iconography to attempt to engage with reality.
《Miss Anthropocene》是Grimes的第五张专辑，也是她作为一个真正的流行歌星的第一张专辑----她口碑极佳的2012年专辑《Visions》和2015年令人上瘾的动感专辑《Art Angels》为她带来了很大的名气。她和科技巨头Elon Musk的恋爱关系更提升了她的知名度，她想用这样的影响力讨论气候危机----不过她自己并不用这样的词语。“我想要让气候变化变得有趣。”她在采访中和Instagram上说道。这意味着，Grimes想要用她喜欢的奇幻、罪恶、流行偶像的方式参与进现实。
The result is a record that’s more morose than her previous work, but no less camp. Art Angels was the result of a decade spent feverishly honing the tenets of songwriting, production, and engineering in order to show listeners who she was, and what she could do (be a pop star). Miss Anthropocene is the willful destruction of that self-conception. Grimes calls the sound “ethereal nu metal,” and the vibe is more honest to the pensive, sometimes cynical, public persona Grimes has shared in public over the last decade.
这样的结果是一张比她先前的作品更加阴郁的专辑，但稀奇古怪的风格却丝毫不减。《Art Angels》源于她十年间不停打磨词曲写作、设计和制作，以此向听众展示她真正的自己和她成为一个流行歌星的潜力。《Miss Anthropocene》却打破了那样的自我概念。Grimes将这样的新效果称作“空灵的新金属”，比她过去十年营造的悲伤、时而愤世嫉俗的公众形象更加坦率。
In November 2018, Grimes released “We appreciate Power,” a collaboration with her best friend HANA, and a cunningly meta prelude to Miss Anthropocene. Though the propulsive, guitar-driven track didn’t end up on the album, it reveals the aesthetic cynicism behind it: a beckoning chant about capitulating to A.I. supremacy from the perspective of a girl group, the ultimate vessel for artifice and propaganda. Surprisingly—or not, given Grimes’ track record of being more outspoken on Twitter and Tumblr—the 10 tracks that make up Miss Anthropocene, are lyrically more ambiguous about this ambitious theme. Instead, we’re left with a convoluted narrative about personifying climate change through a fictional cosmology of demons and villainesses giddily celebrating global warming as a force of good. In that sense, Miss Anthropocene reflects the creative state in which it was made: “negative, aggressive, and isolating.”
在2018年十一月，Grimes释出了《We appreciate Power（我们感激力量）》”，这首与她最好的朋友HANA合作的单曲是开启《Miss Anthropocene》的巧妙序曲。即使这首有力的、以吉他为主的歌并没有进入专辑，它却揭示了专辑背后的愤世嫉俗美学：这是一首引诱人屈服人工智能的歌曲，演唱者是一个少女组合----高超的诡计和宣传方式。令人吃惊地----也许并不，毕竟Grimes总是在Twitter和Tumblar上更加直接地表达意见----新专中十首歌的歌词在传递这个主题上比较模糊。取而代之的是一段将气候变化拟人化的复杂叙事，在一个虚拟宇宙中，各种女恶魔、反派令人眼花缭乱地庆祝着全球变暖。在这个意义上，《Miss Anthropocene》反映了Grimes的创意观念：“负面的、攻击性的、孤立的”。
When Grimes veers away from high concept toward examining intimate and relational forms of human erosion, Miss Anthropocene finds some clarity. “We don’t love our bodies anymore,” she intones over the droning wasteland of “Darkseid,” which also features metallic vocals by the Taiwanese-rapper 潘PAN (formerly Aristophanes). “So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth,” introduces this conceit, weighed down by a simple drum pattern. It’s a lament about the ways in which women are domesticated through patriarchal forms of control. “Specifically how when a dude cums inside you, you become in their thrall,” she said in an April 2019 interview, alluding to her relationship with Musk, who is now thought to be the father of her expected child. “Love can be this beautiful thing, but then love is the thing that’s fucking up my career. The biggest change … is losing my hardcore masculinity. I used to just be free of all this bullshit all the other girls were going through, and now I feel like I’m not.” (She’s more besotted, jubilant even, on the winsome closer “IDORU.”) And on “Delete Forever,” she shifts focus to addiction, vocals high and clear in the mix as she sings over a freakin’ banjo: “I can’t see above it, guess I fuckin’ love it.” It’s a sublime, mood-perfect vignette of self-destructive nihilism. Grimes wrote it the night Lil Peep died of an accidental overdose.
当Grimes从高概念转向研究人类在亲密关系中的破坏与毁灭时，新专《Miss Anthropocene》清晰地表达了她的观点。“We don’t love our bodies anymore. (我们不再爱自己的身体了)”她在歌曲“Darkseid”创造的荒原上唉叹。这首歌中的金属唱腔来自台湾说唱歌手潘PAN(原名Aristophanes)。“So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth”塑造了专辑的末世感，简单的鼓点支撑着歌曲的骨架。她对女性在父权控制下被迫接受的规训感到惋惜。“当一个男人在你体内射精时，你就成了他们的奴隶。”在2019年4月的一次采访中，她这样说道，影射她和马斯克的关系。公众猜测他是Grimes即将出生的孩子的父亲。“爱情是美丽的，但它也搞砸了我的事业。最大的变化…是失去我引以为豪的硬核男性特质。我曾经以为自己不需要像别的女孩一样经历这些破事，但现在我不再这样认为了。”（在专辑温柔的尾声“IDORU”中，她变得更加热情，甚至欣喜。）“Delete Forever”探讨了上瘾的主题，在混音中，她一遍弹着班卓琴，一边用高亢而清晰的声音唱到：“I can’t see above it, guess I fuckin’ love it. (我不能看见更多，该死的，我也许是太爱它）”这是对自毁式虚无主义的表达和升华。在Lil Peep意外死于药物过量的那个晚上，Grimes写下了这首歌。
Miss Anthropocene thrills when it reveals a refined, linear evolution of Grimes’ long-standing interest in rave nostalgia and alluring pop music from around the world. On “Violence,” a vocal trance banger co-produced by Deadmau5 affiliate i_o that’s destined for a RuPaul’s Drag Race lip-sync, Grimes gives one of her most dynamic performances. Through gauzy overdubs and steady four-on-the-floor drums, she flips between whimpering and a snarl to delineate perspectives of an abusive relationship. And “4ÆM,” which she teased two years ago as an “ethereal chav jam that’s like a cyberpunk interpretation of the [Bollywood historical fantasy blockbuster] Bajirao Mastani,” delivers on the mind-bogglingly referential impulse. It’s Hollywood futurism: an Orientalist fantasia colliding with a revved-up hook; the soundtrack to a John Wick fight scene.
《Miss Anthropocene》是Grimes对怀旧音乐节元素和世界流行乐的又一次引用和发展，因此显得激动人心。“Violence”是专辑主打的人声迷幻乐，由Deadmau5旗下的音乐人i_o共同制作完成，下一步就能登上鲁保罗变装皇后秀的舞台。在这首歌里，Grimes呈现了至今最生动的演出之一。在飘渺的配音和稳定的迪斯科鼓点节拍下，她时而呜咽，时而咆哮，两极化的唱法从不同角度刻画了虐待关系的实质。“4ÆM”回应了他两年前构思的创作想法：“这是果酱味的空灵音乐，用赛博朋克阐释宝莱坞历史奇幻票房赢家《帝国双璧》。”这首歌充满了意想不到的跨文本指射。这是好莱坞的未来主义：加速的副歌部分与歌曲勾勒出的东方主义图景相互呼应，仿佛是John Wick打斗场面的配乐。
So much about the actual music of Miss Anthropocene succeeds that the choice to bury it below a warped—and yes, misanthropic—concept about “The Environment” makes it hard to connect with who Grimes is as an artist today. Standing in the way of humans reckoning with climate emergency are multiple delusions: that wealth brings freedom, that boundless acquisition and unchecked growth remain tenable, and that political and economic institutions are inherently trustworthy actors. Grimes sounds like the pop star she’s worked very hard to become, but her imagination seems diminished—or, like many of her celebrity ilk, is cordoned off in a bubble floating above the rest of humanity. In 2020, revolutionary pop stardom might try to clarify, rather than obscure, the havoc that systems wreak when it comes to, say, gender roles and social compliance, technology and surveillance capitalism, nationalism and land exploitation, or whiteness and pathological denial.
《Miss Anthropocene》中的众多歌曲都取得了成功。Grimes选择把专辑放在一个扭曲的，有些愤世意味的“环境”概念下来解读，让听众对她今日的艺术家身份充满疑惑。许许多多的妄想阻碍了人类应对环境危机：财富能带来自由，无边的掠夺和无限的增长唾手可得，政治和经济机构是值得信赖的虚拟演员。Grimes听起来像她努力想成为的那个流行明星，但她的想象也有自身的局限——她像周围众多名人一样，漂浮在全人类之上的泡沫中。在2020年，革命性的流行明星们更应该澄清众多压迫性结构带来的伤害。包括性别角色和社会服从，科技和资本主义监视，民族主义和土地开发，白人至上主义在内的种种公共讨论话题不应该被模糊带过。
And that’s the obstacle, the slimy mouthfeel, standing in the way of Miss Anthropocene offering genuine catharsis: Grimes, the self-taught, self-possessed iconoclast, as insincere. In this very specific political moment rendering climate crisis as dystopian aesthetic is privileged and indulgent, and perhaps even more frustrating given Grimes’ stage wink of an album title. Who exactly is the subject of her misanthropy? Having achieved recognition and acclaim for what she can do with Visions and Art Angels, the question remains: Who is she now? And so, some footnotes from Grimes’ life feel useful here: childhood ballerina, daughter of a former accountant and former Crown prosecutor-turned-journalist, and in a relationship with a man whose real-time net worth literally jumped from $41 billion to $44.2 billion between drafts of this review. Sometimes it is important to be reminded that celebrity is also a system, a way of distracting the powerless and nurturing ruling class values through notions of exceptionalism and vanity. Perhaps, before she was a pop star, Grimes might have made a statement with this album—but what the world needs now is less obfuscation, not more.
所以，有着黏糊糊质感的《Miss Anthropocene》并没有给听众提供真诚的情感宣泄：Grimes，这个自学成才也同时唯我独存的反传统者并不真诚。在这样的政治背景下，把真实存在的环境危机偷换成反乌托邦式的美学标准彰显了创作者的特权，因为过于放纵而令人沮丧。谁是专辑标题“恨事者”瞄准的对象？在前两张专辑《Visions》和《Art Angels》大受好评的背景下，我们不禁要问：现在的她是谁？关于她人生轨迹的注脚也许能为我们提供一些视角：童年时代的芭蕾舞演员，前银行家和转行为新闻记者的皇家检察官之女，现在正和一个净资产在这篇乐评定稿前就从410亿美元上升为442亿美元的企业家交往。名人效应也是系统运作的产物，用虚荣和卓越等伪概念来巩固权力阶级的统治，分散其他人的注意力。也许，在成为流行明星之前，Grimes已经用这张专辑宣示了自己的观点。然而，这个世界现在需要减少误会，而不是变本加厉。
