搬运译Pitchfork评The 1975专辑《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationship
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：WhitneyL
校正：Nina Wang
The British band’s outrageous and eclectic third album attests to the worth of putting in an honest effort in the face of near-constant gloom.
这支英国乐队的第三张专辑大胆而兼收并蓄，证明了在接连不断的挫折面前，坚持不懈的可贵。
The 1975 dare to be too much. Led by frontman and lyricist Matty Healy, the quartet has made its name on an unruly brand of abundance throughout this decade: musically, referentially, emotionally, all of it. Did Healy pop pills, lick coke, and twirl a revolver before holding up a convenience store and getting shot in the torso—but ending up totally fine!—in the video for early hit “Robbers”? He did. Did they lavish the title I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it upon their second album because it was the only thing grandiloquent enough to match the record’s fizzy mix of sunblast synths, plastic guitars, and millennial neuroses? Of course. And did they preface their new LP, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, with a 24-page manifesto that includes manic scribbles (“THIS IDEA HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE”), a picture of Healy petting a dog whilst on the toilet, and a technophobic survey of our contemporary clusterfuck of an existence that concludes: “THE LEFT AND RIGHT GROW MORE APART BUT YOU CAN JUST CLICK ‘ADD TO CART.’” Yes, yes, and more yes. To infinity.
1975乐队太牛b了。在主唱兼作词人Matty Healy的带领下，过去的10年中，这支四重奏乐队以其桀骜不驯而闻名：音乐上、发展上、情感上，全都如此。在早期热单“Robbers”的MV中，Healy在抢劫一家便利店并被击中之前，是不是磕过药、注射过麻醉剂、把玩左轮手枪？——最终的事实是，他什么事儿也没有！为什么他们第二张专辑《I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it（我喜欢你睡觉的时候，因为你是如此美丽，却又如此浑然不觉）》这个名字如此冗长？难不成是因为只有这样华丽的名字才能配得上专辑中的混响、电音和狂热？嗯，当然了。他们告诉他们的新合伙人，新专辑《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships》的歌词本是一份长达24页的宣言,其中包括疯狂的涂鸦(“THIS IDEA HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE”),Healy在厕所摸狗的照片, 以及一份对我们当代群体存在的科技恐惧症的调查得出的现实:“左右两派相去甚远，但是，你可以点击‘添加到购物车’。”他们会说，是的，就是这样！
Such a riot of excess may cause the casual observer to think: Who the fuck do these guys think they are?! This is reasonable. But it is also misguided. Because the 1975 are a thrillingly unreasonable band for unreasonable times. Healy is their generational mouthpiece—a guy who’s never met a contradiction he couldn’t fully inhabit, to arresting effect.
如此放纵的行为可能会让别人想：这些家伙TM到底以为自己是谁？！这种想法确实有点道理，但在某些情况下也是一种误导。因为1975是一个存在于不合理时期的不合理乐队。Healy是他们这代人的代言人——他从来没有遇到过他无法控制的矛盾，因此显得引人注目。
The 29-year-old is a pop star who is both infatuated with and embarrassed by pop stardom. He will play his charismatic part onstage or in interviews and then immediately flog himself for doing so, as his incessant inner monologue does battle inside his skull. Five years ago, in an effort to quiet his brain buzz, he turned to heroin, and then to rehab, and is now a former addict who is wary of glamorizing the rock’n’roll clichés he’s lived through. He is constantly online and constantly alarmed by what that does to our sense of self, our humanity. He hates Trump but knows that talking about hating Trump is boring. He is the son of two British TV stars who, in his youth, was treated to regular family visits by the likes of Sting; he also once said, with a smile, that his “biggest fear” is “being Sting.” He’s an atheist who believes in a thing called love.
这位29岁的流行歌星既留恋自己流行歌星的身份，又为此感到尴尬。他会在舞台上或采访中扮演他魅力非凡的角色，然后又后悔做流行化的事，因为他头脑中不断进行内心独白。五年前，为了让自己的大脑安静下来，他开始吸食海*因，然后去了戒毒所，现在他作为一个前瘾君子，小心翼翼地美化他经历过摇滚泛滥的时代。他不断地上网，不断地为这对我们的自我意识和人性的影响而担忧。他讨厌特朗普，但知道谈论讨厌特朗普很无聊。他是两位英国电视明星的儿子，在他年轻的时候，像Sting这样大名鼎鼎的人经常来家里看望他;他还曾笑着说，他“最大的恐惧”是“做Sting”。他是个无神论者，相信一种叫做爱的东西。
All of these curiosities play out spectacularly on A Brief Inquiry. The album is similar to its predecessor in its boundless sense of style, swerving from Afrobeats to brushed-snare jazz balladry to one track that sounds like a trap remix of a Bon Iver ayahuasca trip. But whereas I like it when you sleep sometimes could be a tick too clever and unwieldy, A Brief Inquiry, produced almost entirely by Healy and drummer George Daniel, is more purposeful. Take that Bon Iver-type freakout, “I Like America & America Likes Me,” where Healy’s voice is transformed into a smear of Auto-Tuned slogans, an adbot on the fritz. But listen closely and his bionic spasms start to sound like the meter readings of a society that’s moving too fast to process anything in a meaningful way. “Am I a liar?!/Will this help me lay down?!” Healy yelps, too harried to stop for answers, too wired to take a nap. It’s impossible to tell exactly where his actual voice ends and where the digitized effects take hold.
所有这些好奇心在《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships》中都显露无疑。这张专辑在风格上与它的前辈有相似之处，从非洲节拍到落入陷阱似沙沙声的民谣，再转向一首听起来像是Bon Iver（美好冬季乐团）的迷幻trap混音。不过，这样一来《I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it》便时而显得过于巧妙，时而又显得过于笨拙。而Healy和鼓手George Daniel所作的《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships》风格便更加鲜明。拿Bon Iver的迷幻混音来说，“I Like America & America Likes Me,（我爱美国，美国也爱我）”，Healy的声音变成了一堆电音式的口号，就像一台出了故障的机器。但仔细听，他的声音就像电表读数那样，速度之快就像这个快速发展的社会，身处其中的我们无法让每一天都过得有意义。Healy尖叫道：“我是个骗子吗？！这会助我躺下吗？”。现代人忙到不能停不下来寻找答案，甚至兴奋得睡不着觉。我们不能准确分辨出他的声音在何处结束，数字音效在何处占到上风。
When it comes to the 1975’s more widescreen scope—filtering in culture’s ills along with personal ones—the album hits a daunting apex with “Love It If We Made It.” It is the rare Anthem for Our Time that actually gets the job done: This thing holds the mirror up to our collective faces so close you can see your breath on it. As gargantuan drums clear a path before him, Healy mimics the endless scroll, where dead refugees and dead rappers all slide by on the same timeline. He recasts one of the year’s most cursed tweets—“Thank you Kanye, very cool!”—into one of the year’s best lyrics, in turn laying bare Ye’s current fallen status as nothing more than mere flotsam for the churning news cycle. Healy repeats the track’s title for a vaguely optimistic hook, but his gasping delivery tells a different story. The song ends with staccato strings that recall a clock ruthlessly ticking down the seconds.
在过滤文化弊病和个人问题上，1975从更广阔的视角出发，凭借“Love it If We Made it”一曲，让这张专辑达到了令人生畏的顶点。这是一首少有的真正完成任务的时代赞歌：它把镜子举到我们所有人的面前，离我们如此之近，以至于你能感受到自己的呼吸。当巨大的鼓声为他开路时，Healy的歌唱彷佛是无穷无尽的时间轴，那些死去的难民和说唱歌手都这个时间轴上滑过。今年，他引用的一条最受批判的推文——“Thank you Kanye, very cool!（谢谢坎耶，那非常酷！）——成为了今年最优秀的歌词之一，赤裸裸地把Kanye目前的颓态比喻成新闻中反复出现的垃圾信息。Healy在副歌中轻松地重复着这首歌的标题，但他那喘息声却讲述了另外一个完全不同的故事。这首歌以断断续续的弦音结尾，让人不禁想到时间的流逝。
According to A Brief Inquiry, if there is any sort of solution to our modern apocalyptic predicament, it involves stepping outside, risking a broken heart, and searching for connections beyond the screen. And yet, Healy is the first one to acknowledge that this is harder than ever to do: The album’s only marriage is presented as a cautionary tale, read by Siri, about a troll who falls in love with the internet. “The Man Who Married a Robot” acts as a sly sequel to “Fitter Happier,” Radiohead’s doomsaying, robo-voiced nightmare from OK Computer. It sits atop a bed of treacly piano plinks, like a demented parody of a Facebook commercial that’s desperately trying to get you to log on again. In the end, the troll dies. The internet does not.
按《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships》的说法，如果有什么方法可以解决我们现代生活中末日般的困境，那就是走出去，冒着心碎的风险，在屏幕之外寻找联系。然而，Healy是第一个认识到这比以往任何时候更加困难的人：这张专辑中关于婚宴的歌曲是一个警示，用Siri的声音讲述了一个巨魔爱上互联网的故事。“The Man Who Married a Robot（嫁给机器人的男人）”就像Radiohead的“Fitter Happier（更健康更快乐）”（Radiohead的《OK computer》中末日预言般的单曲）的续集。这首歌以甜蜜的钢琴声为旋律基调，模仿着迫切希望人们再次登陆的Facebook广告。最后，巨魔死了，而互联网却没有。
The members of the 1975 began playing together in their teens as an emo band, and they are still interested in wringing out unadulterated feeling from everything they touch. This is the thread that grounds even their most dubious dabblings, and makes their dilettantism amount to more than a series of stunts. At first, with its glistening synths and languid tempo, “I Couldn’t Be More in Love” seems like pure ’80s schmaltz, something that Michael Bolton could have cut between yacht rides. But instead of luxuriating in the musical ooze around him, Healy takes the slickness as a challenge and turns in his rawest performance on the entire album. Recorded the day before he entered rehab late last year, his vocals are frayed as he laments the end of a four-year relationship with the panic of a crashing pilot. When he howls, “What about these feelings I’ve got?” it sounds elemental, a refashioning of emo’s core into something jarring and new.
1975的成员们在十几岁的时候就开始在emo乐队一起玩音乐，至今他们仍然乐于从接触到的一切中发掘最纯粹的东西。这是他们成功的基础，让他们将业余爱好发展成实打实的本领。“I Couldn’t Be More in Love（我已经爱到极限了）”开头的空灵声音和慵懒节奏，让人感觉像是80年代的伤感的音乐，就好似 Michael Bolton可以用游艇自由驰骋。但是Healy并没有沦陷于他周围的音乐氛围之中，而是把这种舒适当作一种挑战，并且呈现出最为野性的表现。这首歌记录了去年年底他进入康复中心前一天的感受。他叹息四年恋情的结束，嗓音也因此变得有些沙哑。他吼道:“谁在乎我的感受呢？”这或许听起来很幼稚，但却是对emo式歌曲核心创作的重新塑造。
The album is bookended by a couple of songs that offer some hard-won comfort while nodding to the band’s hometown of Manchester and the lives they once led there. “Give Yourself a Try” is all pinched guitars and staticy drums, a salute to fellow Mancunians Joy Division and their singer, Ian Curtis, who killed himself at 23. On the song, Healy looks back at what he’s done, what he could have done better, and what he would do differently given the chance. He also mentions a 16-year-old 1975 fan who took her own life. “Won’t you give yourself a try?” he asks sweetly, over and over.
专辑中的几首歌曲，传递了一份来之不易的慰藉，同时致敬乐队的故乡曼彻斯特以及在此的过往。“Give Yourself a Try（给你自己一个机会）”里充满节奏紧凑的吉他声和活力四射的鼓声，致敬Joy Division乐队和他们的主唱 Ian Curtis（23岁时自杀身亡）。在这首歌中，Healy回顾了自己的人生经历，一些他本可以做得更好的事情，以及如果有机会他会做出不同选择的事情。他还提到了一位16岁的歌迷，她结束了自己的生命。“你不试试吗？”他一遍又一遍甜蜜地问道。
A Brief Inquiry ends with “I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes),” the most life-affirming 1975 song to date. Its familiar fist-pump theatrics bring to mind the Glastonbury-leveling power of another one of Manchester’s most imposing bands, Oasis. But this is more than a tribute. Healy takes the broad ambition and jubilance of a classic Oasis song and turns it inward, with words that acknowledge the mettle it takes to simply get through the day—words that could only come from him. “There’s no point in buying concrete shoes/I’ll refuse,” he sings, resolute, before giving up one more plea: “If you can’t survive; just try.” Life becomes him.
专辑最后一曲是“I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)（我总是想死(有时候)）”，这是乐队迄今为止创作的最认可生命价值的一首歌。熟悉的挥舞拳头的姿势让人想起格拉斯顿伯音乐节中另一支来自曼彻斯特最威风的乐队Oasis。但这不仅仅是一种致敬。Healy以Oasis乐队的一首经典歌曲的宏图和欢腾为主题，并将其内化，用歌词表达了度过每一天所需要的勇气——这些话只可能出自他之口。“没有必要买混凝土鞋/我会拒绝，”而在拒绝之前，他又坚决唱道:“如果活不下去，那就试试活着。”生命与他结伴而行。
