【搬运译】Spin评The 1975 专辑A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
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：Lynn Liu
校正：Ryan-Chopin
只有The 1975才能做出像《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships》这样令人目眩神迷的专辑
“There are no big bands doing anything as interesting as us.” This Matt Healy heat check was plastered on the cover of Billboard this past August, and he has not shied away from repeating it in the lead-up to the 1975’s recently released third album. He’s got reason to be feeling himself. “Love It If We Made It,” their online-addled reboot of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” is the first song to be written entirely in retweets, “The Man Who Married a Robot”—the album’s spoken-word cautionary tale of a man who falls in love with the internet—might be the first song to owe royalties to Siri, and get a load of the title: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. Despite only recently being afforded artistic credibility, the 1975 explicitly courted accolades like “Anthem of our Time,” “the millennial answer to OK Computer,” “an undeniably 2018 vision of pop music”—and it actually worked. Brief Inquiry has been out for about a week, so the backlash would be starting… right about now if Healy hadn’t encoded it directly into the album itself. A Brief Inquiry asks What It All Means while questioning whether any band, let alone the 1975, have the right to tell us anything other than, “I don’t know…. It’s just a lot.”
“其他大乐队所做的事（音乐）并不像我们做的这么有意思。”Matty Healy这个当红辣子鸡登上了去年8月Billboard的封面，他毫不避讳谈论The 1975即将推出的第三张专辑。他此般身心舒畅是有原因的。“Love it If We Made It”，这首歌是他们根据现在网络混乱的现实对“We Didn’t Start the Fire”的重启，这也是第一首歌词全部是转载推文的歌曲。“The Man Who Married a Robot”——这张专辑中由口述警世故事组成的单曲，它讲述了一个男人与互联网相爱的故事——这可能是第一首欠Siri版税的歌。所以这张专辑名为《A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships（网络交友的快问快答）》。尽管直至最近The 1975才拥有一些艺术信誉，The 1975明确地获得了诸如“我们这个时代的颂歌”，“千禧年的电台司令乐队”，“2018年无可否认的流行音乐视野”等赞美，这也是当之无愧的。在《A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships》发行一周后，如果Healy现在不直接把它写入专辑中的话，那么便会有强烈抵制了……《A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships》（专辑名中有“快问快答”之意）在发问这意味着什么，同时也向所有乐队发问，不单单是The 1975，问道他们是否有权利来告诉我们任何事，而不是说“我不知道……就只是很多事。”
The 1975 are just a lot. They make overwhelming albums about being emotionally and technologically overwhelmed. More than anything they’ve released to date, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is prone to maniacal ambition as well as crippling self-doubt and anxiety, obsessed with the granular details of social media etiquette while contemplating the benefits of going off the grid for a while, if not forever. This is a brief inquiry—58 minutes is not a lot to ask when you consider the scope of it all—but “I don’t know” serves as a mission statement rather than a copout to analytic paralysis. Healy probes everything about making music and consuming music in 2018 without resorting to cynicism or nihilism.
The 1975就是这样能告诉你很多事的乐队。他们制作了这张势不可挡的专辑，无论是在情感上还是技术上都能压倒一片。比起他们之前所发行的专辑，《A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships》更倾向去展示一种疯狂的野心，严重的自我怀疑与焦虑，还有沉迷于社交媒体礼仪的细微细节，同时也在沉思远离社交媒体一段时间（如果不是永远）的好处。如果你考虑到这张专辑的时长， 58分钟的专辑并不是很长——但是“我不知道”是它的宗旨而不是逃避分析的无力。Healy在2018年探索了音乐制作和音乐消费的一切，没有采用任何的冷言冷语或是虚无主义。
Yes, they’re bored by “rock music” imagery, stifled by its usage as a genre signifier, and still moved by it as a form of emotional communication. “I’m Jim Morrison. Am I Jim Morrison? I’m sorry that I’m Jim Morrison. I’m [expletive] Jim Morrison!” Healy joked in a recent interview; the 1975 pay direct homage to Ian Curtis and Thom Yorke, respectively a guy who wanted to be Jim Morrison and a guy who said it but definitely didn’t mean it. Healy has his issues with why the solo singer-songwriter is stereotyped as a gold standard for truth-telling. But his band knows they’re not above feeling crushed by a Damien Rice or Dashboard Confessional or Julien Baker song, and so here we have bedside acoustic weepers like “Be My Mistake” and “Surrounded by Heads and Bodies.” (What better way to express late night regret than while someone’s sleeping right next to you?) They brought in composer David Campbell to arrange strings for the closing imperial march “I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes),” and it’s telling Healy specifically namedropped Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” as an inspiration—though still subject to critical disdain as corporate alt-rock, the music from that era frequently confronted darkness within rudimentary electronic beats, glistening, gilded guitars, and karaoke-friendly hooks.
是的，他们厌倦了 “摇滚音乐”的意像，被它当作流派符号的用法所压抑，可在它作为情感交流的形式时，人们仍被它深深感动着。“我是Jim Morrison。我是Jim Morrison吗？我很抱歉我是Jim Morrison。”Healy在最近一个采访中开玩笑说到。The 1975直接致敬了Ian Curtis和Thom Yorke，他们一个想成为Jim Marrison，另一个说过这句话却不是发自内心。Healy也有他自己的问题——为什么唱作歌手要被打上真相诉说者的标签呢。但是他的乐队知道他们并不会被Damien Rice，Dashboard Confessional或是Julien Baker的歌给碾压，所以我们能够听到像“Be My Mistake”“Surrounded by Heads and Bodies”（比起有人睡在你身旁，还有什么更好的办法来诉说深夜悔恨呢？）这样不插电的枕边伤感歌曲。他们请作曲家David Campbell为“I Always Wanna Die（Sometimes）”的结尾创作了一段弦乐，这也是在告诉我们Healy尤其赞赏Goo Goo Dolls的单曲“Iris”，并把它当做了一种创作灵感——尽管这首歌作为一首另类摇滚的作品仍然受到蔑视性的批评，那个年代的音乐一直要直面黑暗，充斥着基本电子节拍，闪闪发光、镀金的吉他，还有卡拉OK友好型的音符符尾。
Though A Brief Inquiry is just as dizzying and disorienting as 2016’s heroically omnivorous i love it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, the 1975 take themselves a little more seriously now. Two years ago, they blanched at being called a boy band while still engaging in the kind of symbiotic fan relationship endemic to that form: i love it was riddled with visual and lyrical Easter eggs, thumbing its nose at criticism and rewarding those who saw past it. Nothing here is quite as fearlessly saucy as that album’s lead single “Love Me” or audacious as its ambient midsection, and even the clunkiest lyrics aren’t a pile-up of car-krashian panache-in’. Though still endearingly schticky at points—Healy loves leaning on a gospel choir to hit the choruses—they stick the landing far more often. The band’s ambition and appetite is a matter of fact now, and the wow factor of “the 1975 made a Trippie Redd track” or “they think they’re George Michael” soon gives way to of course they did. “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME” could’ve been the frothiest trop-house deconstruction of IG infidelity on Scorpion and “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” could conceivably be covered as country, hair metal, or New Wave.
即使《A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships》这张专辑像2016年那张大胆涵盖一切的专辑《i love it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it》一样，是如此让人眼花缭乱、迷失方向，The 1975现在变得稍微严肃了一些。2年前，他们在努力经营那种与粉丝共生的关系之时也害怕被称作是一个由小男孩组成的乐队：单曲“i love it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it”就像一个满布视觉和抒情的复活节彩蛋，对批评不屑一顾，而却奖励那些能够看穿它的人。没有什么能比这张专辑的主打歌“Love me”更毫无顾忌的无理放肆了，甚至连里面最粗陋的歌词也是屈指可数的“car-krashian panache-in（原歌词是Karcrashian panache 不过唱出来和这个发音是一样的）”。尽管有时这首歌非常讨人喜欢，因为Healy喜欢用福音唱诗班来做和声，但是唱诗班经常远远地站在麦克风后。这支乐队的雄心壮志已成为事实，“The 1975制作了一个Trippie Redd音轨”，“他们觉得自己是George Michael”等本是让人惊叹之词也变成了“他们当然可以做到了”。“TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME”本可能是最不起眼的trop-house（一种电子舞曲的类型），讲述了IG对Scorpion的不忠；“It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)”则可以被理解其组成有乡村音乐、流行金属、或是新浪潮音乐等。
Still, their artistic growth hasn’t come at the expense of the seediness that makes the 1975 feel like an illicit pleasure even when Healy is trying to be the better man. Is he cerebral because he laces his lyrics with literary references, or is he basic because they happen to be Infinite Jest and Gone Girl, two tomes which are part of the pop canon in their own ways? Is he vapid because he quotes literally the first line of each, or is it a genius metacommentary on, say, the way people namedrop books they’ll never finish? Healy claims the video for “Sincerity Is Scary” is “wholesome as a bowl of soup” and perhaps it’ll distract from the twisted pre-chorus: “I’m sure that you’re not just another girl / I’m sure that you’re gonna say that I was sexist / I feel like you’re running out of all the things I liked you for.” This is the song that begs the listener to open themselves up to the possibilities of true IRL connection and I know that because “Sincerity Is Scary” received a thorough Artist Verified Genius commentary from Healy himself.
尽管如此，他们的艺术成长并不会以颓废为代价，这种颓废让The 1975感受到了非法的快感，也让Healy努力成为一个更好的人。他的智慧是因为他在歌词中加入了文学元素，还是说他恰巧参考了书籍《无穷无尽的笑话》和《消失的女孩》呢？这两本书以它们自己的方式成为流行经典的一部分。他之所以索然无味，是因为他逐字逐句地引用了每本书的第一行，还是说这是一个天才的衍生评语，这就好比人们经常会给自己从来看不完的书起名字这样？Healy说“Sincerity Is Scary”的mv是“像一碗汤一样健康”，也许它会从扭曲的副歌前部分中分离出来：“I’m sure that you’re not just another girl （我很确信你不仅仅是一个普通的女孩）/ I’m sure that you’re gonna say that I was sexist（我很确定你会指责我说我又性别歧视了） / I feel like you’re running out of all the things I liked you for（我感觉你正毁掉你身上我所喜爱的一切）.”这首歌想让听众们在现实生活中尽可能地打开心扉，直面自己，我知道因为在“Sincerity Is Scary”里我们能得到Healy作为一个被证实的完全天才艺术家的评论。
“Why would you believe you could control how you’re perceived / When at your best you’re intermediately versed in your own feelings?” he asks later on that song, maybe the only inquiry that needs to be made into online relationships. How often does your carefully curated persona misalign with your actual personality? How much suffering could you avoid if you gave up the game entirety? And why the hell should you believe Matt Healy when he offers the same alternatives to meaningless sex and screen time that you ignored from your parents: Honesty is the best policy, dare to be great, give yourself a try. It holds weight because the 1975 are living proof, even if he doesn’t always take his own advice. Try and find the earliest video of “sex,” with their severe haircuts, black-and-white branding, and Johnny Cash posters. This was a group of young men trying so damn hard to be perceived as austere and cool, while critics claimed to see right through them. Six years later, the critics are on their side, and it doesn’t even really matter. The 1975 are still whoever the hell they want, and completely themselves.
“Why would you believe you could control how you’re perceived （你为何会相信你能控制别人对你的看法）/ When at your best you’re intermediately versed in your own feelings?（你竭尽全力时也只能勉强控制你的情感）”他后来在那首歌中质问道，也许只有在对网络关系进行询问之后才能得到答案吧。你精心策划的人物形象与你在现实的反差有多少次不一样？还有，当Matty Healy为你提供了与无意义的性行为相同的替代品和你忽视父母所在手机上花的时间时，你为什么要相信他呢？诚然，最好的解决办法就是，要有胆量变得更好，给自己一个尝试的机会。这首歌之所以很有分量是因为The 1975提供了活生生的证据，即使他总不听取他自己的建议。去找到最早的“sex”的mv，你会发现里面有着演员们朴实的发型，有着黑白的商标，还有Johnny Cash的海报。这群年轻人拼命努力想让别人觉得他们很正经、冷酷，而批评者却早已看穿了他们。6年后，那群批评者们转而支持他们，这早已没有那么重要了。The 1975仍然是他们想要成为的那个人，那就是他们自己。
