【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Coldplay 2019年专辑《Everyday Life》

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

审译：Ryan-Chopin

排版：Ryan-Chopin

On the 52-minute vision quest that is their new double LP, the world’s most earnest arena band sound looser than they have in years.

Coldplay推出了一张长达52分钟的双碟专辑，这张专辑是这支全球最努力的乐队近些年来听起来最放松的一张专辑。

Chris Martin is backstage at Saturday Night Live discussing the Syrian refugee crisis with a group of teenagers. A few feet away, his longtime bandmate Jonny Buckland briefly drowns out the conversation to check his guitar tone, and Martin outstretches an arm to silence him in a somewhat papal display of intraband passive aggression. Buckland mutes his strings; Martin returns to the teens. “You see all these pictures of young people like you—and a bit older people like us—having to leave their countries,” he says, “and everyone calls them ‘refugees’ instead of just people.” So, he explains, Coldplay’s new song “Orphans” is his attempt to communicate how any of us could be in their position, longing to return to our normal existence. Its walloping chorus goes, “I want to know/When I can go/Back and get drunk with my friends.” Tonight when the cameras roll, Martin instructs the teenagers to dance accordingly, with abandon.

Chris Martin在《周六夜现场》的后台和一群年轻人谈论了叙利亚的难民危机。离他不远处，他的乐队成员Jonny Buckland在检查吉他的音色，因此这段谈话被短暂地淹没了，Martin伸出手示意他安静下来，像是在带内消极抵抗一样。Buckland把吉他的声音调小了一些后，Martin回到年轻人之中。他说:“你们看到很多像你们这样的年轻人，还有像我们这样的稍微年长一点的人被迫离开他们的国家的照片，每个人都称他们为‘难民’，而不仅仅称他们是‘人’”。因此，他解释说，在Coldplay的新歌“Orphans”中，他试图向我们传达这样的信息：我们任何人都可能处在他们的位置，渴望回归正常生活。歌中的大合唱是这样的:“I want to know/When I can go/Back and get drunk with my friends.（我想知道/我什么时候能回家/和我的朋友们喝个酩酊大醉。）”当晚，当摄像机开始拍摄时，Martin让孩子们尽情地跳舞。

And yet, even by poorly mixed SNL standards, the performance falls flat. The song itself is solid: a style of traditional character-driven folk storytelling and pure pop bliss that Martin has aged gracefully into. And his bandmates—guitarist Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion—remain as emphatic and unobtrusive as ever as they lay out his runway. But the very thing Martin asks from the young dancers doesn’t quite ring true. Somewhere amid their joyful choreography, the pro-forma Coldplay anthem, and the humanitarian crisis that inspired it lies a diSconnect: After spending two decades trying to transcend the throes of our humdrum existence, how do Coldplay find their place within it?

然而，即使以不高的标准来衡量，Coldplay在《周六夜现场》的表现也是平平。这首歌本身是有质感的：一种以传统人物为主导的民间故事且包含了纯粹流行乐的风格，Martin很好地融入其中。而他的乐队成员——吉他手Buckland、贝斯手Berryman和鼓手Will Champion——在表演时，他们一如既往地耀眼又谦逊。但Martin要求年轻舞者做的事情听起来却不太真实。在他们欢快的舞蹈、Coldplay形式上的颂歌以及刺激歌中的人道主义危机之间，存在着某种脱节:在花20年时间试图超越我们单一存在的痛苦之后，Coldplay如何在其中找到自己的位置?

 It’s the challenge they face on their new double album, Everyday Life. The moody 52-minute vision quest is spread over two distinct halves, titled Sunrise and Sunset, giving the band enough space for an unadorned voice memo and a multi-part epic with a two-minute saxophone solo. Some songs are their softest, most understated compositions since their debut, 2000’s Parachutes, while two others feature contributions from ubiquitous pop formalist Max Martin. There’s a sarcastic, seething folk song about gun violence and a deeply earnest ballad called “Daddy,” sung from the perspective of a neglected child. “It’s all about being human,” Martin said in an early interview about the record. “Every day is great and every day is terrible and every day is a blessing.” Yes it’s a cliche, but he also has tears in his eyes while he says it.

这是他们在新专辑《Everyday Life》中所面临的挑战。这张长达52分钟的视觉探索专辑分为两部分，分别名为《Sunrise》和《Sunset》，这给了乐队足够的空间来演奏一段无修饰的声音备忘录，以及一首多声部大作，其中穿插了两分钟的萨克斯独奏。有些歌曲是他们自2000年的处女作《Parachutes》以来最温和、最低调的作品，而另外两首则是大热流行创作人Max Martin的作品：一首是关于枪支暴力的民歌，它很具讽刺且很激烈；另一首名是为“Daddy”的抒情歌曲，歌曲站在一个被忽视的孩子的角度，听起来非常诚挚。“所有的一切都是关于人性的，” Martin在早期的一次采访中谈到这张唱片时说。“每一天都很伟大，每一天都很可怕，每一天都是一种恩赐。”是的，这些话都是些陈词滥调，但他说的时候时眼里却含着泪水。

Despite its sprawling architecture, the album is one of the band’s most consistent, unified works. The music is filled with other voices: Nigerian vocalist Tiwa Savage, the late qawwali singer Amjad Sabri, Alice Coltrane, Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison, and three generations of Kutis (Fela, Femi, and Made) are credited in the liner notes. While it can feel cluttered at times, overflowing with annotations and footnotes, it rarely feels heavy; the sequencing seems to inhale and exhale with each song, its attempts at arena peaks (“Church,” “Orphans”) followed by moments of mournful ambience. The dynamics help create a sense of space that’s been missing from nearly everything this band has recorded over the past 10 years.

尽管这张专辑结构混乱，但它是乐队最一致、最统一的作品之一。我们在专辑中也能听到其他歌手的声音:尼日利亚歌手Tiwa Savage，已故卡瓦力歌手Amjad Sabri，歌手Alice Coltrane和Frightened Rabbit的Scott Hutchison，以及Kutis的三代人(Fela, Femi和Made)都被记入了专辑之中。虽然它有时会让人感觉杂乱，充斥着各种注释和脚注，但它却很少让人感觉沉重;曲目的顺序就像一次次呼吸，它到达全专高潮(“Church,” “Orphans”)的尝试伴随着悲伤的气氛。这种动态有助于创造一种空间感，这是这支乐队在过去10年间几乎所有音乐中所缺失的。

Each of this decade’s Coldplay albums has been packaged as its own (relative) experiment, a direct reaction to its predecessor: the pop one, the sad one, the happy one. And after 2015’s jubilant but uninspired A Head Full of Dreams, the largely somber tone of Everyday Life feels like its own statement: a stark gray palette that makes abundantly clear what’s absent. Without the ghastly, trend-hopping singles that have weighed down their latest releases, my favorite part of the album is also its most unprocessed portion, halfway through Sunset, where the fragments “Èkó,” “Cry Cry Cry,” and “Old Friends” roll into each other like a medley at rehearsal, something they’re just testing out for potential. The melodies don’t always stick, but the performances highlight just how long it’s been since Coldplay sounded like this: a quiet band in a small room, their characteristic enthusiasm drawn from simply making music together.

十年间，Coldplay的每一张专辑都被包装成他们自己的(相对的)实验，是对上一张专辑的直接反应:流行的、悲伤的、快乐的。2015年的专辑《A Head Full of Dreams》让人欢欣鼓舞，但在那之后，《Everyday Life》中就存在着的阴郁基调，就像它自己的声明:一个纯灰色调色板，让人清晰地了解其中缺失的部分。这张专辑中，没有强烈、紧跟时代的单曲来降低这张专辑的档次,专辑中，我最喜欢的部分也是最原生态的部分 —— 《Sunset》中的“Èkó,” “Cry Cry Cry,” 还有 “Old Friends”，它们水乳交融,就像彩排时的混乱一样，这几首歌曲就像是在测试潜力一样。旋律并不总是一成不变的，演出突显出Coldplay许久未出现的声音:安静的乐队在一个小房间里，简单地在一起进行音乐创作造就了他们特有的热情。

These unguarded moments make Martin’s lyrics—a sore spot for this band for as long as they’ve existed—easier to forgive. “Èkó” in particular, with its lapping “Bird Song” rhythm, feels so natural and breezy that you forget the chorus reads, “In Africa, the rivers are perfectly deep and beautifully wide.” More fleshed-out political songs like “Trouble in Town,” where the band’s show-stopping climax is juxtaposed with a disturbing recording of police harassment, and “Guns,” where Martin explodes in a chorus how “everything’s gone fucking crazy,” channel similar feelings of urgency. It’s as if he realized his everyman musings would sound more compelling if they were offered as the in-progress thoughts they are.

这些毫无防备的时刻让Martin的歌词——这支乐队一直以来的痛处——更容易被谅解。尤其是“Èkó”，以 “Bird Song”重叠的节奏，让人感觉这首歌非常的自然、轻快，以至于你忘记了副歌是这样写的:“In Africa, the rivers are perfectly deep and beautifully wide.（在非洲大陆，河流深嵌于大地，水面波澜壮阔 [歌词源于网易云]）”。像“Trouble in Town”这样的更具体的政治歌曲，乐队的高潮部分与警方骚扰的令人不安的录音并置，还有“Gun”，其中Martin在合唱中爆发，问道，“这一切是怎么变得如此疯狂的”，他向听众传达了类似的紧迫感。这就好像他意识到，如果把他的普通人的想法作为这张专辑的灵感，他的想法会更有说服力。

Accordingly, when it’s time to sum everything up, he finds himself at a loss. The last two tracks on the record, “Champion of the World” and “Everyday Life,” are its most traditional moments, each its own attempt to deliver a happy ending (and possibly a radio hit). “Champion of the World” finds resolution in a few mixed metaphors—a hard-won boxing match, a majestic bicycle ride, a soaring rocket ship—that all dissolve in a twinkling, singalong refrain. “Everyday Life” is less graceful in its ascent. Martin has admitted that the song itself came to him long after the band settled on the album title, and it does feel a bit like a half-filled template. For all its vague gestures toward what it means to be alive right now (“Everyone hurts, everyone cries,” Martin offers), he actually comes closest to nailing it in the opening line: “What in the world are we going to do?” Even if their answers come up short, it’s refreshing to hear Coldplay searching again, with all the rest of us.

因此，当该总结一切的时候，他却发现自己不知所措。唱片的最后两首歌“Champion of The World”和“Everyday Life”是它最传统的时刻，每首歌都试图带来一个圆满的结局(可能还会在电台引起轰动)。“Champion of The World”在一些混合的比喻中找到了解决的方法——一场来之不易的拳击比赛，一次了不起的自行车骑行，一艘翱翔的飞船——所有的这些都在一个闪烁、歌唱的副歌中消失了。“Everyday Life”在其展开的过程中就没那么优雅了。Martin承认，这首歌是在乐队确定专辑名称很长时间之后才想到的，它确实有点像一个半空的模板。尽管歌曲中对现下生活含糊其辞(“Everyone hurts, everyone cries（每个人都会受伤，每个人都会哭泣）”Martin写道)，但实际上，他在开篇时就写到:“What in the world are we going to do?（我们到底要做些什么）”即使他们的答案非常简短，但能听到Coldplay和我们一起再次探索问题的答案，这的确让人神清气爽。