Rolling Stone 文章Courtney Barnett Interview: New Album 2021年新专辑采访

搬运自：网易云音乐专栏【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

翻译：Beans_Beans 

The Australian singer-songwriter talks about the unexpected joys of her third solo LP, Things Take Time, Take Time, which is described as being about finding "some sort of joy and gratitude, out of some sort of pain and sadness"

这位来自澳大利亚的创作型艺术家将谈到她在创作第三张个人专辑《Things Take Time, Take Time》中所收获的意外惊喜，她将自己的这份杰作描述为“从某种未知的痛苦和悲伤中寻得愉悦和感恩”

At the start of 2020, Courtney Barnett was looking forward to a year of open-ended songwriting, with just one proviso. “It’s important to remember to live and to experience and to have something real to write about,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview that January. “Not just to sit in a room and write an album for the sake of making an album.”

2020年年初，Courtney Barnett 便期待着在新一年不着边际的音乐创作，同时也为之附加有一新目标——“最重要的是要能够时时刻刻记得去生活、去体验、同时将那些真真切切的东西写下来，”她在同年一月份的一次采访中谈道。“而不仅仅为了制作专辑而‘困’在房间中制作它。”

Barnett laughs when she’s reminded of that conversation now. “That’s funny,” the Australian singer-songwriter, 33, says on a call from her home in Melbourne. “Very ironic … Whether I liked it or not, that’s what the world gave us. It’s probably the most quiet year I’ve ever had.”

当她再度想起那次谈话时，Barnett 笑了。“这很有趣，”这位33岁澳大利亚歌手兼词曲作者身处墨尔本的家中接到电话时说道。“真是讽刺……无论我喜欢与否，造化弄人呀！这可能是我度过的最平静的一年。”

The album that she spent most of 2020 sitting in a room and writing is called Things Take Time, Take Time, and it will arrive this November 12th on Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. For fans of Barnett’s distinctive songwriting, it’s a rich reward, full of the sly observations on the peaks and valleys of everyday life that have made her one of the past decade’s most beloved indie artists. There are surprises in store, too: The 10 songs on the album shine in a newly revealing light, mostly stripped of the crunching rock-band sound that filled her first two solo LPs, and presented instead in a form that feels closer to the radical honesty of a solo bedroom tape. It just might be the most personal record yet from an artist who’s already given the world plenty of emotional truth.

2020年的绝大部分时间里，她都坐在房间中创作着名为《Things Take Time, Take Time》的专辑，它将于今年11月12日于 Mom + Pop Music 和 Marathon Artists 问世。对那些钟于 Barnett 别具一格的音乐风格的粉丝来说，能够体悟她对跌宕起伏的日常生活极具独到的视角，不可不谓是一份丰厚的奖品，也正因此使她成为上个十年来最受欢迎的独立艺术家之一。这其中也隐藏着惊喜：专辑中的十首歌曲在她全新的视角中焕发光芒，其中绝大部分剥离了曾充斥在她前两张个人唱片中浓重的后期痕迹，进而营造了一种更接近于个人卧室形式的感觉，使之以更激进、更真挚的形式呈现出来。这可能是这位早已为世人带来无数真情实感的艺术家迄今为止最私人化的唱片。

Barnett describes Things Take Time, Take Time as an album about finding “some sort of joy and gratitude, out of some sort of pain and sadness” — a new morning after a dark night. “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To,” a bright, jangly highlight of the new LP, is a good example of what she means.

Barnett 将《Things Take Time, Take Time》描述为一张“从某种未知的痛苦和悲伤中寻得愉悦和感恩”的专辑——在漆黑的夜晚中引来又一个清晨。“Write a List of Things to Look Forward To”这一新唱片中明亮、灵动的高光时刻想必便是那合她心意的绝佳事例。

She’d begun writing new songs shortly after the spring 2018 release of her second solo album, the turbulent Tell Me How You Really Feel, but ended up discarding most of them after a while. “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To” was one of the first songs she kept. It arrived toward the end of 2019, at a time when she was feeling deeply distraught for reasons that included a devastating bushfire season in Australia.

她在2018年春天发行第二张个人专辑《Tell Me How You Really Feel》后不久就已经开始着手创作新作品，但最终在一段时间后丢弃其中绝大部分歌曲，而"Write a List of Things to Look Forward To "便是她留存下的歌曲之一。这首歌在2019年年底即将到来时，澳大利亚遭遇毁灭性的丛林火灾，除此之外的种种使她深感不安。

“I was just really sad,” she recalls. “I was in a really dark place, and a friend told me … They didn’t know how to help me. They said, ‘Why don’t you try to write a list of positive things in your life that you’re looking forward to?’ At the time, I was like, ‘Nothing. There’s nothing I’m looking forward to.’”

“我当时真的很伤痛，”她回忆道。“那是我的至暗时刻，我的一个朋友告诉我……他们甚至无从知道如何帮助我。他们说‘你何不试着写一写你的“愿望清单”呢？’当时我想：‘空白，我哪有什么可期待的’。”

Her friend kept pushing, and eventually Barnett came up with enough items to fill “like, 25 verses,” which she later pared down to the two-minute-plus mini-anthem that appears on Things Take Time, Take Time. “Sit beside me, watch the world burn,” she sings over upbeat chords. “I love that the song feels so fun,” Barnett says. “It sounds like you’re driving across a highway and it’s sunny. I love the juxtaposition of those things.”

在她的朋友屡次劝导下，最终 Barnett 想出了足够的内容来使“大约……25节”的小诗更加充实，后来她将其缩减为两分多钟的迷你颂歌，并决定作为《Things Take Time, Take Time》的曲目之一。“Sit beside me, watch the world burn”她运用欢快的和弦如是唱到。“我很喜欢这首歌，趣味横生，”Barnett 说道。“它听起来仿佛是在明媚的日光下，你开车驶过高速公路……等等我所喜爱的这些东西一齐出现。”

She went on to play a pair of bushfire relief fundraisers in the early weeks of 2020, then flew to the U.S. for a short solo tour that ended with a benefit show in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day. By the time she got back to Melbourne, the new threat of Covid meant that she had to self-quarantine. Without anywhere of her own to stay, she crashed at a friend’s empty apartment. “I ended up staying there for the whole year,” she says. “It was this amazing little flat, and it had these beautiful big windows and big light. I was really lucky to get that place.”

在2020年的最初几周，她陆续参加了一些丛林火灾救援筹款活动，随即便飞往美国进行了短暂的个人巡演，最终以情人节当天在洛杉矶举行的一场义演作结。当她重返墨尔本时，新冠袭来而这意味着她必须居家隔离。由于暂时没有自己的住处，她在一个朋友的空公寓里住了下来。"我最后在那里住了整整一年，"她说。"那是一个了不起的小公寓，敞亮的落地窗、充足的光线，很是庆幸自己能住在如此一个地方。"

As the reality of lockdown sank in, Barnett learned to cook, subscribed to the Criterion Channel, got deeper into the films of Agnes Varda and Andrei Tarkovsky, read books she’d been meaning to tackle, and painted watercolor scenes. “I had a lot of grand plans,” she says with a laugh. Mostly, though, she sat by the window, drinking coffee and playing acoustic guitar.

不得不面对居家隔离的现实，Barnett陆续学会了做饭、订阅了Criterion频道、深入研究了 Agnes Varda 和 Andrei Tarkovsky 的电影、读完了她一直想却从未翻开的书籍，甚至还迷上了水彩。"她笑道："我有很多宏伟的计划——不过，大多数时候，只是坐在窗边，喝着咖啡弹木吉他。”

One of the sweetest songs on the new album, “Turning Green,” reflects that experience directly in its lyrics, which hint at renewed hopes after a low season (“The trees are turning green/And this springtime lethargy/Is kinda forcing you to see/Flowers in the weeds”). “I sat by that window, and there was a huge tree at the front, so I watched the seasons change,” Barnett says. “I guess it’s also metaphorical. There’s something so joyous about that song. You feel that the characters have been through some sort of transformation, and they’ve come out on the other side.”

“Turning Green”作为专辑中最甜美的歌曲之一，所向我们描绘的就是这种体验——低谷过后、迎来新生（“The trees are turning green/And this springtime lethargy/Is kinda forcing you to see/Flowers in the weeds”）“我一坐在窗边，映入眼帘的便是一棵巨树，由此中便能体悟季节变幻，” Barnett 说道。“我想这也是一种隐喻。那首歌蕴含着令人愉悦的东西。你能体会到如今人们已发生了某种转变——已经从黑暗一边脱离出来。”

The album’s first single, “Rae Street,” began with a writing exercise rooted in old memories. “One day I made a list of all the phrases that I could remember my parents saying,” she says. The enigmatic adage in the chorus — “Time is money, and money is no man’s friend” — comes from something her father used to say, repurposed for a period of extended reflection.

专辑的第一首单曲 "Rae Street "始于一次深植于记忆深处的写作练习。她说道：“那天，我把我所记得的我父母说过的所有话列了出来。”副歌中神秘的格言—— “Time is money, and money is no man’s friend” ——便是她的父亲曾经说过的话，在经过漫长岁月洗礼后被重新道来。

When Barnett was ready to record some demos, she turned to a vintage Roland CR-8000 drum machine that she’d picked up a few years earlier after a visit to Wilco’s instrument-filled Chicago loft. “It’s analog and a little bit clunky,” says Barnett, who describes herself as “addicted to cute little drum machines.”

当 Barnett 准备录制一些 Demo 时，她的目光停留在了一台复古样式的 Roland CR-8000 鼓，这是她几年前在参观了 Wilco 位于芝加哥阁楼的器乐展览会后买的。Barnett 说道：“它更像是个模型、有点笨重。”她还形容自己 “对可爱的小鼓机上瘾了”。、

She’d never taken the time to learn how to use this one properly (“I would just pick a beat and be done with it”), but now she had nothing but time. So she called her friend Stella Mozgawa — the Warpaint drummer who had played drums on Lotta Sea Lice, Barnett’s 2017 duets album with Kurt Vile — and got a tutorial. Soon she and Mozgawa were trading playlists of artists who’d made innovative use of programmed rhythms, from Arthur Russell to Yo La Tengo. “It felt fun and it felt exciting,” Barnett says. “That steady drum machine does something to my brain that makes it feel calm and safe.” Realizing that Mozgawa was “the perfect musical match,” Barnett invited her to co-produce her next LP. 

她从来没有花费时间去学习如何正确使用这个（“我就选一个节拍，完事了”），如今她反而除了时间之外一无所有。她打电话给她的朋友 Stella Mozgawa ——乐队 Warpaint 的鼓手，他曾在 Barnett 2017年与 Kurt Vile 的合作专辑 Lotta Sea Lice 中担任鼓手——讨到了一个教程。不久，她和 Mozgawa 交换了那些在使用编程节奏的艺术家上极具创新的歌单，从 Arthur Russell 到 Yo La Tengo。“这感觉很奇妙、很是令人兴奋不已，”巴尼特说。“那台稳固的鼓对我的内心起了些作用——让我感到平静和安稳。”意识到 Mozgawa 会是一位“完美的音乐伴侣”，Barnett 于是邀请她共同制作她的下一张唱片。

In December 2020, she and Mozgawa met up at Golden Retriever Studios in Sydney to begin recording. At this point in her process, Barnett would have normally called in her live bandmates and put the drum machine back on its shelf. “I think I just told myself that was for demos, and when you went to the studio you got a real drummer and kept it real,” she says. “I was adamant about that.”

2020年12月，她和 Mozgawa 终于在悉尼的 Golden Retriever Studios 见面，随即着手开始录制。在这个过程中，Barnett 通常会叫上她曾经的现场乐队成员，并把鼓放回架子上。她说：“我想我只是告诉自己，学会它仅仅是为做演示，当你去录音室的时候，我坚信你需要的是一个真正的鼓手来达到最真实的效果。"

This time, though, she wanted to preserve the meditative magic of her home demos. Many of the songs wound up featuring lo-fi beats programmed by Mozgawa on various drum machines, along with live drums from Mozgawa, vocals and guitar from Barnett, bass parts from both, and more. “It’s pretty much just us,” Barnett says. “It feels so alive to me, like it’s all happening at once.”

不过这一次，她还想保留她家庭小样中蕴含的冥想魔力。许多歌曲最终采用了 Mozgawa 在各种鼓上制作出的低保真节拍，除此之外及 Mozgawa 的现场鼓声、Barnett 的人声和吉他声、二人的贝斯部分……Barnett 说道：“几乎这一切都仅有我们两个人。对我来说，这感觉极富活力，就像它们在同一时刻一齐出现一般。”

“Turning Green” went through a long journey before taking its final form as a spare motorik groove, just a bass and a drum machine, that blossoms after two minutes into a spiky guitar solo. “I loved that melody so much when I found it, but when I took it to the studio and showed it to Stella, it didn’t sound right,” Barnett says. “It sounded like one of my other songs or something. Stella said, ‘Why don’t we pull the song apart and turn it upside down?’ … I love the song that it became. It allows the lyrics to exist in this very bare environment. Not sugarcoated.”

"Turning Green"的诞生经历了一个漫长的旅程，最终形成了一个休闲模式下的 Motorik 惯例（Motorik 是一个由音乐记者创造的音乐术语，用于描述 Krautrock 乐队常使用的4/4拍节奏，例如 Neu! 以及 Kraftwerk）——只有一个贝斯和一台鼓，并在两分钟后绽放出一个尖锐的吉他独奏。“当我发现这个旋律时，非常喜欢，但又当我把它带到录音室并给 Stella 看时，它听起来不太对劲，”Barnett 说。"它听起来像我以前的作品还是什么。斯特拉说：‘我们为什么不把这首歌肢解或是把它颠倒过来呢？……我喜欢它如今变化后的模样。它能使歌词更加直白的显露出来，而没有糖衣的遮掩。"

Other songs came into focus elsewhere. “Here’s the Thing,” the gorgeously floating ballad that’s one of the album’s centerpieces (“I’m not afraid of heights/Maybe I’m just scared of falling”), began with Barnett idly playing guitar while she watched TV at home. She captured the vocal take later, on a trip to the country in northern New South Wales. “We were staying near this huge mountain,” she recalls. “It was the most beautiful environment. There’s something so special about those vocals.”

其他歌曲则从其他角度攻入人们的视线。"Here's the Thing"，这首华丽的飘荡民谣是专辑的核心曲目之一（“I’m not afraid of heights/Maybe I’m just scared of falling”），始于 Barnett 居家看电视时百无聊赖弹吉他。后来，她在新南威尔士州北部的一次乡村旅行中捕捉到了这段灵感。“我们住在一座大山附近，”她回忆说。“那有着最优美的环境。这些人声中蕴藏着一些与众不同的东西。”

Soon, Barnett will hit the road for her first shows since early 2020, beginning with some solo dates this month in New Zealand; in November, around the album’s release, she’ll arrive in North America for a full-band tour that stretches through next February. She’s looking forward to touring again and seeing how her songs change shape. “Over the years, there’s going to be other versions of these songs, as I play them live with the band,” she says. “They’ll start sounding different again. They always do.”

不久，Barnett 将踏上她自2020年初以来首次演出的旅程，从本月在新西兰的一些个人演唱会开始，历经11月——在专辑发行前后，她将抵达北美进行乐队巡演——直至明年2月。她期待着再次进行巡演，看看在这途中她的歌曲会如何变幻。她说：“多年来，每当我和乐队一起现场演奏时，这些歌曲便会丛生各式版本——它们会再次开始听起来如此不同，它们总这样。”

In the meantime, she has a new album she’s excited to share with the world soon. “On the one hand, nothing was happening to me last year,” she says. “But at the same time, so much was happening! There’s that lyric in ‘Turning Green’ about flowers in the weeds — as in, finding beauty in a place where you least expect it. That’s my ongoing lesson for myself.”

如今，她制作了一张新专辑，她很高兴很快能与世界一同分享它。“一方面，去年我度过了平平无奇的一年，”她说。“但同时它又趣味无穷！在‘Turning Green’中，有一句歌词是关于杂草丛中的花朵——在你总会在最无期望的地方寻得美好——这是我反复对自己的教诲。"