【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Big Thief 2019年专辑《Two Hands》（两只手）
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
审译：Lynn Liu
排版：SpencerC
The second landmark album this year from Big Thief is raw, tactile, and essential. The intimate songs zoom in on a band that feels, at this moment, totally invincible.
Big Thief今年的第二张里程碑式的专辑新鲜出炉，它生动可触且精炼出彩。此时，这些温馨的歌曲把我们的视线猛地拉近到这支已经无与伦比的乐队。
Coming from a band who, just five months ago, materialized somewhere deep in a forest with a mystical set of songswrapped in a vast, alien cosmos—a band who, in order to summon the perfect squall of noise, claimed to have suspended an electric guitar from the ceiling of a barn and batted it around like a piñata in a circle of amplifiers—Two Hands is jarringly earthbound. For their latest album, the Brooklyn quartet Big Thief invites you to join them live and unadorned in the studio for the span of 10 songs. “Hand me that cable/Plug into anything,” Adrianne Lenker sings, moments after issuing a more basic instruction: “Cry with me/Cry with me.”
5个月前，这个乐队用一组仿佛漫游在无垠又陌生的宇宙之中、充满神秘感的歌曲把密林深处具象化；他们试图召出最完美的噪音，声称曾把电吉他吊在谷仓顶上然后在一圈放大器中像是戳圣诞爆竹（译者注：piñata，一种装着礼品的彩色纸包，大家在游戏中用棍子戳破）似的敲击、弹奏；对于这样一个乐队，《Two Hands》可以说是惊人的接地气了。在Big Thief的最新专辑中，这支来自布鲁克林的四人乐队邀请你亲自加入到他们简单的录音室中，共度这10首歌的时光。“Hand me that cable/Plug into anything（把电线递给我/随便插到什么上去），”Adrianne Lenker唱到，片刻之前她则给出了一个更简单的吩咐：“Cry with me/Cry with me（和我一起哭吧/和我一起哭）。”
Nearly every song overflows with tears and blood, bared teeth and broken tongues; living, killing, dying. There are few overdubs, and sometimes you hear the band members instructing each other when to step back or take a solo, like they’re just rehearsing for the actual performance. It makes for a specific kind of rock record: an attempt to capture a band’s imperfect, raw essence, to show what happens when they simply count to four and take off. The approach is best known for accentuating a tough, ragged cohesion, like Neil Youngrecords in the ’70s, but this record goes somewhere different. The more Big Thief zoom in, the more magical they sound.
几乎每首歌中都充满了血与泪、裸露的牙齿和破碎的舌头；生活，杀戮，死亡。其中有几支叠录片段，有时你还能听见乐队成员们指示对方什么时候该往后站一点或是开始独奏，就好像他们是在为真正的演出而彩排。这促成了一种特定的摇滚专辑：试图捕捉乐队的不完美与最原始的本质，展示他们简简单单数到四然后开始演奏的时候到底是什么样子。这样的方式最为人所熟知的目的便是为了强调一种坚韧又粗粝的凝聚力，比如Neil Young在70年代的那些专辑，但是这张专辑在某些方面又是与众不同的。越贴近Big Thief，他们听上去就更加充满魔力。
It’s a trick that these musicians have spent their careers perfecting. Since their 2016 debut, Masterpiece, each successive album has felt like a breakthrough geared for larger spaces. But their own interpersonal dynamic has followed an inverse trajectory. “At this point we’re basically touching each other,” guitarist Buck Meekrecently observed about their magnetic live shows, a connection made literal on the new album cover. After the spacious odes to the natural world on U.F.O.F, Two Hands is a record defined by these collisions—a reminder that intimacy isn’t just about the comfort we bring to each other but also the proximity to our sickness and pain, blood and guts.
这些音乐家们在职业生涯中不断地进化、完善是有诀窍的。从他们2016年的首张专辑《Masterpiece》开始，接下来每张专辑都像是瞄准了更广阔空间的突破。但他们之间的人际关系却遵循了一条完全相反的路线。“到现在这时候我们基本上就是在互相抚摸，”吉他手Buck Meek最近这样评论他们那极富吸引力的现场演出，这也正是新专辑的封面所表现出的那份联系。《U.F.O.F》那对自然的广阔颂歌之后，新专辑《Two Hands》则是一张由这些冲突和碰撞所定义的专辑——它提醒着我们：亲密不仅仅是我们带给对方的舒适感，也是和我们的厌恶、痛苦、鲜血与内脏的紧密接触。
The record proceeds along a bell-curve, with the heavier moments at the center reverberating through the quieter points on either end. The focus is on the patient interplay between Lenker’s guitar—rhythmic and physical, like a slot machine with infinite outcomes—and James Krivchenia’s drumming, as patient and instinctive as it’s ever sounded. The accompaniment from Meek and bassist Max Oleartchik, who plays a few solos in “Those Girls,” is more understated but just as crucial. In sparer, creeping moments like “The Toy” and “Cut My Hair,” you can sense the band listening to each other, responding with reassuring hums and nods. And when they do cut loose, you feel the thrashing.
专辑沿着一条钟形曲线展开，中间部分最沉重的时刻在两端更安静的片段间不断震荡回响。核心就在于Lenker充满律动与生命力、像是一台有着无穷无尽效果的音效贩卖机的吉他声，和James Krivchenia听上去无比耐心又随性的架子鼓演奏之间那悠长的相互作用。伴奏来自Meek和贝斯手Max Oleartchik（他在“Those Girls”中有几段独奏），他们的演奏似乎更加轻描淡写，但其实同样十分重要。在像“The Toy”和“Cut My Hair”这样更空阔舒缓的歌曲中，你似乎能感觉到乐队成员之间在认真地相互倾听，用叫人放心的哼哼和点头来相呼应答。而当他们一下切断联系时，你就会有那种“一切都结束了”的感觉。
Variations on the word “crying” appear in half these songs, and each time Lenker sings it, she tells a different story. Occasionally her lonesome, quivering voice feels like an outsider descendent of country-folk singers like Kath Bloom or Iris DeMent, particularly in “Replaced,” a co-write with Meek. Other times, she sounds like someone clawing at her own skin, trying to escape. In “Forgotten Eyes,” a heartland rocker whose lyrics might be about homelessness, she trembles uneasily toward the final chorus, holding out the “ng” of “tongue” until it makes a phlegmy, growling noise in the back of her throat. Big Thief were built for moments like these, where sound merges with meaning, where the floating voice in your headphones finds its body.
代表着不同意思的“crying”一词出现在了一半的歌曲中，每次Lenker唱这个词，都在讲述一个完全不同的故事。有时她那孤寂又轻轻颤动的嗓音听上去简直就像Kath Bloom或是Iris DeMent这样的乡村民谣歌手的后代，这一点在和Meek共同创作的“Replaced”一曲中表现得格外突出。其余的时候，她听上去仿佛有人在撕扯着她的皮肤想要逃走。在“Forgotten Eyes”这首歌词也许是关于无家可归的heartland rock风格的歌曲中，她非常不协调地颤抖着唱着最后一段副歌，把“tongue”中的“ng”拖得很长很长，直到似乎都已经有痰在她的喉咙深处隆隆作响。Big Thief正是为了这样的精彩时刻而存在，声音与意境相融，耳机中游离的歌声也找到其安身之处。
As a lyricist, Lenker has become newly adept at telling stories through her absences. She’s written songs in the past that dazzle with poetry (“Mary”) and others that are memoiristic in their precision (“Mythological Beauty”), but these are pared down to just the most crucial bits of dialogue and wisdom. “Everybody needs a home and deserves protection,” she sings in “Forgotten Eyes,” her voice breaking at the word “needs.” “Talk to the boy in me/He’s there,” she begs in the closing “Cut My Hair” as the music cuts out from underneath her. Best of all is “Not,” a fiery exorcism that merges some of her most explosive imagery with a climactic guitar solo; the desperation in her playing feels like a string of cries interrupted by shallow, gasping breaths.
作为作词人，Lenker在她消失在大家视野里的这段时间里变得越来越擅长讲述故事了。过去，她写过如诗歌般让人惊叹的歌曲（“Mary”），还有其他像回忆录般精准的歌曲（“Mythological Beauty”），但现在的这些歌曲都被削减到了最关键的几句对话和哲理。“Everybody needs a home and deserves protection（每个人都需要家，每个人都需要被保护），”她在“Forgotten Eyes”中唱着，唱到“needs”这个词时有些破音。“Talk to the boy in me/He’s there（去跟我身体里的那个男孩说吧/他就在那儿），”结尾曲“Cut My Hair”中她如此乞求着，音乐也仿佛从她的体内戛然而止。其中最棒的一首就是“Not”，这首像火焰般燃烧着的“咒语”把她所描绘的最具爆炸性的画面和和高潮迭起的吉他独奏完美融合；她的表演中显露的绝望就像是一连串被细微而急促的喘息而打断的尖叫。
“Not” sits at the heart of the record with “Shoulders,” a stunner that’s been in the band’s live repertoire for years. Like a dark analog to Bruce Springsteen’s “The Promised Land” or the Mountain Goats’ “This Year,” it gains power from its folk simplicity: a plaintive melody and a chorus that snowballs with a momentum that seems physical—part promise, part prayer. Lenker, who once noted that she is often both the attacker and prey in her own songwriting, finds its gospel not by rising above her circumstances but through succumbing to her complicity. “The blood of the man who’s killing our mother with his hands is in me,” she sings. “It’s in me/In my veins.” Her voice sounds genuinely desperate, anguished, like she would rid herself of it if she could.
The version of “Shoulders” on Two Hands is the definitive take, though you can see its spirit in every live performance. During one particularly great video from Philadelphia’s Johnny Brenda’s in 2017, Lenker’s guitar cuts out during the first chorus. She takes it off and, for the rest of the song, is just a singer: pulling the microphone from the stand, closing her eyes, and doubling over as if in pain to deliver the second verse. Instead of picking up her guitar part, Lenker’s bandmates only highlight her absence, drawing your attention to the new void at the song’s core. By the end, all that’s left is Krivchenia’s steady drumbeat and Lenker front and center, sort of jogging in place, as everyone in the room holds their breath. It’s a random technical issue but it’s also a chance for Big Thief to pose their favorite kinds of challenges. How much can we strip away without losing our essence? What happens when our most basic modes of expression fail us? How will we carry on together? On Two Hands, they are unstoppable.
与“Not”一样居于专辑核心地位的还有“Shoulders”这首几年来一直存在于乐队的现场表演曲目中的绝妙作品。它就像是对Bruce Springsteen的“The Promised Land”或是The Mountain Goats的“This Year”的暗暗模仿，从民谣的朴素中汲取了源源不断的力量：悲拗的旋律，带着真实物体一般的势头愈发激烈的副歌——既是承诺，又是祈祷。Lenker曾经提到过，在自己的创作中，她既是猎手，又是猎物；她找到自己的信条的方式不是从环境中脱身开来，而是屈服于种种的牵绊。“The blood of the man who’s killing our mother with his hands is in me（亲手杀死我们的母亲的那个男人的血就在我的体内），”她这样唱道。“It’s in me/In my veins.（就在我的体内/流淌在我的血管里）。”她的声音听上去真真切切，充满了极度的绝望与痛苦，仿佛如果她可以，她就会亲手把自己从这世上抹去。
《Two Hands》专辑中的“Shoulders”绝对是最佳的版本，虽然说他们的每场现场演出你都能体味到这首歌的精髓。有一段格外精彩的视频在2017年录制于费城的Johnny Brenda’s酒吧，Lenker的吉他在第一段副歌时没有声音了。她取下了吉他，余下的时间里仅仅是作为一个歌手：她把麦克风从支架上取下，闭上了眼睛，弓起身子，仿佛正承受着巨大的痛苦，继续演唱着第二段主歌。Lenker的同伴们也并没有去填补她的吉他片段，反而强烈地突出了她的吉他的缺席，把你的注意力吸引到歌曲核心中这段新的空白。到结束时，剩下的就只有Krivchenia坚定不断的鼓声，Lenker站在最中间，好像在舞台上闲逛，房间中剩下的人则都屏住了呼吸。这是偶发的技术性事故，但却也是Big Thief展示他们最喜爱的挑战的机会。我们能够在不丢弃本质的情况下剥去多少东西呢？如果我们最基本的表达模式都出了问题会发生什么呢？我们该怎么一起继续走下去？在《Two Hands》中，他们是不可阻挡的。
