【搬运】【译】Rolling Stone评Paul McCartney 2018年专辑《Egypt Station》

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：BigFudge

校正：Ryan-Chopin

听着保罗五年来的第一张唱片，宛如搭上了一列宇宙列车，行李里装满了呆萌的小黄歌与对和平的希望，但这仍是一张经典的保罗专辑。

Make a list of all the songwriters who were composing great tunes in 1958. Now make an overlapping list of the ones who are still writing brilliant songs in 2018. Your list reads: Paul McCartney. Sixty years after “Love Me Do,” his legend already inviolable, Macca keeps adding new gems to his songbook, with nothing to prove except he’s the only genius who can do this. Egypt Station, his first in five years, is a deeply eccentric song cycle in the Ram mode, made with pop savant Greg Kurstin. The past fifteen years have been a glorious time to be a Paul fanatic—the man has been on a songwriting roll, ever since the 2005 Nigel Godrich jam Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. (And oh yeah—in his spare time, he happens to be still the greatest live performer on earth.)

请你先列出1958年时创作出优质歌曲的作曲人；然后，再列出来2018年仍在坚持创作优质歌曲的作曲人；再比较一下两张名单吧。在这两张名单上都出现的名字只有一个：保罗·麦卡特尼(Paul McCartney)。在《Love Me Do[i]》发行60年后，他已是乐坛不朽的传奇。但保罗仍在坚持创作新的作品，这证明了自己是独一无二的天才。《Egypt Station》是保罗五年以来的第一张专辑。他与流行乐大神格雷格·库斯汀(Greg Kurstin)携手打造了这张专辑，一首首新奇的歌曲不断循环，仿佛开启了当年的《Ram》[ii]模式。过去这十五年，保罗的粉丝们非常开心：自2005年他与奈杰尔·古德里奇(Nigel Godrich)携手打造了《Chaos and Creation in the Backyard》之后，保罗的写歌势头变得高涨起来。（顺便提一下，他在写歌创作领域之余，还是世上最伟大的现场表演者）

[i] 《Love Me Do》是英国摇滚乐队The Beatles的第一首单曲，发行于1962年10月5日，之后歌曲被收录至The Beatles的第一张专辑《Please Please Me》。最初专辑在英国发行时，在榜单上排到了第17。1982年歌曲被重新发行并且达到了第4的位置。

[ii] 《RAM》是保罗·麦卡特尼和琳达·麦卡特尼的一张音乐专辑。发行于1971年，麦卡特尼夫妻二人完成了整张专辑。

Egypt Station flows as a unit, structured like a long ride on a cosmic train, beginning and ending with ambient railway-station noise. It comes five years after 2013’s New, where he stepped out with the psychedelic nugget “Queenie Eye,” one of his funniest and weirdest ever. (Real talk: “Queenie Eye” would have been a top 5 song on Magical Mystery Tour.) These days, he’s not on any kind of assembly line—he only makes albums when he’s got enough worthy songs saved up, which is why his recent work has been top-notch. On Egypt Station, he mixes pastoral acoustic reveries like “Confidante” with intimate piano confessions like “Do It Now.”

《Egypt Station》是一整篇流畅的乐章，宛如宇宙列车上的一次长途旅行，起始与结束之处皆为车站的背景声。五年前的2013年，他以一首迷幻药般的“奎尼之眼(Queenie Eye)”踏出以前的条框，推出了《New》这张唱片，这可谓他最有趣、最古怪的一张专辑了。（说实话，“奎尼之眼(Queenie Eye)”简直可以在披头士当年的《魔幻之旅(Magical Mystery Tour)[i]》里排进前五）这几年，保罗可不是音乐工业流水线包装出来的产品，他只在积累了足够多的好歌之后再发专辑，因此他近来的作品都具有极高的水准。《Egypt Station》中既有“Confidante”这样的田园幻想，也有像“Do It Now”这样的甜蜜钢琴告白。

[i] 奇幻之旅（英语：Magical Mystery Tour）是英国摇滚乐队披头士于美国发行的第13张录音室专辑，是披头士电视电影《奇幻之旅》的原声带。1967年11月27日由Capitol唱片发行。尽管《奇幻之旅》电影接受媒体的广泛批评，原声歌曲专辑却获得商业上的成功，更被提名一项格莱美奖。

Macca spends most of the album singing in character, voicing sentiments people don’t usually expect from this guy. Case in point: “I Don’t Know,” a ballad of mid-life doubt. (“I got crows out my window, dogs at my door / I don’t think I can take any more.”) He’s also picked up a knack for silly sex songs like “Come On To Me” or the ridiculous “Fuh You,” which basically serves as a sequel to his 1971 shagathon “Hi, Hi, Hi.” With the Romantic Beatle slavering “I just wanna fuh you,” it makes “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” sound subtle.

在这张专辑的大部分歌曲里，保罗似乎都在扮演另一个角色，表达着一些私人化感情，也绝对不是听众们非常熟悉的那个保罗。一个例子便是以中年迷茫为主题的“I Don’t Know”。 (乌鸦在窗外，吠犬在门外，自己却仿佛无法呼吸“I got crows out my window, dogs at my door / I don’t think I can take any more.”)他还学会了写像“Come On To Me”这样呆萌的小黄歌，还有一曲“Fuh You”，基本上就是1971年那首“Hi, Hi, Hi”的续集。这位浪漫的前披头士成员仿佛流着口水，唱着“我想与你（哔哔）(I just wanna fuh you)”这样“跃跃欲试”的歌词，真是让“Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?”都显得端庄含蓄。

This album’s masterpiece: “Dominoes,” one of those Paul creations that feels both emotionally direct yet playfully enigmatic. An eerie acoustic guitar hook, worthy of the White Album, builds for almost five minutes, complete with an old-school backwards guitar solo and the disarming farewell line, “It’s been a blast.” It aims for sonic territory someplace where “Too Many People” meets “You Won’t See Me,” yet it ends up somewhere different entirely. “Dominoes” is one of his toughest solo moments ever—it has the unmistakable McCartney touch everybody else keeps failing to copy, yet it feels totally fresh and new.

本专的最佳是“Dominoes”，这首歌完美地融合了赤裸裸的情感与戏谑式的神秘感。原声吉他近五分钟的抓耳独奏，诡异又神秘，再加上旧派的弹奏技巧与解人戒心的结束词“真是一场狂欢 (It’s been a blast.)”，这首歌简直配得上披头士的那张同名专辑[i]。它本来向着“Too Many People”和“You Won’t See Me”的交叉风格前进，却到了完全不同的目的地。“Dominoes”是麦卡特尼最棒的独奏作品之一：它有着他人无法模仿的麦卡特尼本色，却又非常新颖有趣。

[i] 《The Beatles》，又名《The White Album》，是披头士在1968年发行的第九张专辑。这是一张双CD专辑。这张专辑是披头士顶峰之作，它在各个方面都相当前卫，却同时兼顾了可听性。它将试验、旋律、温润、动人等特质融为一体。整体制作水平顶尖卓越，列侬跟麦卡特尼的词曲创作表现并臻高峰。

All Egypt Station has that playful spirit. “Back In Brazil” is a surprisingly successful electro-samba detour, while “Do It Now” expresses the same sentiment as his classic John Lennon elegy “Here Today,” as an older-and-wiser Paul reflects on the kind of emotional resolutions you seek when you realize how short life is. “Happy With You” is a sober folk oddity: “I sat around all day, I used to get stoned / I liked to get wasted but these days I don’t.” Even the timely anti-Trump protest “Despite Repeated Warnings” is a 7-minute mini-suite in the style of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”: even when he’s pissed off about political apocalypse, Paul gonna Paul. As he always should. And as Egypt Station suggests, as he always will.

整张《Egypt Station》都有着这种戏谑式的精神。“Back In Brazil”是一首令人惊喜的电子桑巴，“Do It Now”与那首纪念列侬的歌曲“Here Today”类似，年长睿智的保罗正在思考：当你意识到生命是多么短暂的时候，你会寻求什么样的情感寄托。“Happy With You”是一曲理智的另类抒情曲，“曾经的我天天嗑药，现在的我宛如新人(I sat around all day, I used to get stoned / I liked to get wasted but these days I don’t.)”。即使像“Despite Repeated Warnings”这样极合时宜的反特朗普抗议,也算是长达7分钟的“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey[i]”翻版。即使他对现今的政治危机多么气愤，保罗还是他自己，他也理应如此。而我们从《Egypt Station》可以看出，他永远会是惟一的那个保罗。

[i] “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”是保罗·麦卡特尼和琳达·麦卡特尼合作的《RAM》专辑中的一首歌曲，于1971年9月作为单曲发行，于1971年9月曾在Billboard榜上登顶。