【搬运】【译】NME满分乐评 Lana Del Rey 2019年专辑《Norman Fucking Rockwell》
Lana Del Rey的第六张专辑《Norman fucking Rockwell!（去他妈的诺曼·罗克韦尔）》一鸣惊人，这张专辑可谓包罗万象。她在这张包罗万象的专辑中平衡并展现自己多种风格的方式简直令人叹为观止。
注：Norman Rockwell（1894-1978）是美国的杂志艺术家，在1916到1963期间，他为《星期六晚间邮报》画了超过300张封面。他的图画是现实主义风格，充满温暖和幽默，深受美国人欢迎。这些图画展现出在生活平淡无奇的小镇和乡村里那些人们的生活状态。
In Lana Del Rey’s Twitter bio you’ll find a quote from Walt Whitman’s 1892 poem Song Of Myself. It’s an unsurprising move for someone who’s spent much of the last decade carving out her niche as a 21st-century pop poet documenting, much like Whitman did, her own perspective of America.
在Lana Del Rey推特的个人简介中，她引用了Walt Whitman 在1892年发表的诗歌《Song Of Myself（自我之歌）》。这其实并不奇怪，因为Lana Del Rey在过去十年的大部分时间里都在努力地寻找自我，成为21世纪的流行歌曲诗人，像Whitman一样，记录其对美国的看法。
The quote itself – “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself; I am large – I contain multitudes” – feels like an apt one for this point in Del Rey’s career. Since she broke through with ‘Video Games’ in 2011, she’s been pegged as music’s resident “sad girl”. In 2017, she challenged that label as she beamed at the world from the sleeve of her fifth album ‘Lust For Life’. The narrative was that she was happy now but, as Whitman himself alluded, life doesn’t have a single focus and no one is consistently one thing through it all.
她引用地那句话是：“我自相矛盾吗？很好，我就是这么自相矛盾。我海纳百川-我包罗万象。”这句诗简直是Lana Del Rey职业生涯的生动写照。2011年Lana Del Rey通过歌曲“Video Games（电子游戏）”寻求突破，自那以后，她就与音乐界的“忧郁女孩”这一标签挂上了钩。2017年，她在第五张唱片《Lust For Life （热爱生活）》的唱片套中大放异彩，由此挑战“忧郁女孩”的标签。Lana Del Rey的歌曲仿佛在缓缓述说她很快乐，但是却像Whitman所暗指的，生活没有焦点，没有人从一而终。
On ‘Norman fucking Rockwell!’, Del Rey is many contradicting things. She is hopelessly in love and resigned to misery, an emotional crutch and a “fucking mess”, willing to forgive the men in her life and disappointed in those who orbit in the same circles as her. It’s an album of emotional ups and downs but one that feels, perhaps thanks to her past habit of filtering things through a world of old Hollywood glamour and soft-focus romanticism, like her realest one yet.
在《Norman fucking Rockwell!（去他妈的诺曼·罗克韦尔）》这张专辑中，Del Rey展现了很多自相矛盾的形象。她对爱不抱希望，却又一度陷入痛苦，她是自己情感的支撑，心里却“他妈乱作一团”，她心甘情愿放弃生活中的男人，却又对那些和她一样的人们感到失望。这张专辑的情感跌宕起伏，但或许因为其一贯的叙事风格，即在一种旧式好莱坞的魅力中，在柔焦镜头下的浪漫主义世界里，慢慢地氤氲渲染，因此给人的感觉是：在这张专辑中她展现了有史以来最真实的自己。
There’s nothing soft or romantic about this record’s opening lines. “Goddamn manchild/You fucked me so good that I almost said ‘I love you’,” she sings on the title track, gentle piano rolling beneath her. As she continues, she paints a fuller picture of the target of her words – a fun and wild “self-loathing poet” who blames his inadequate words on the news. As with many of the men in Del Rey’s songs, she openly acknowledges his flaws with a wicked sense of humour, but seems OK to stick it out with him. “Why wait for the best when I could have you?” she asks at one point, as if finding someone better who doesn’t make her feel blue isn’t a realistic option.
这张唱片的开场白一点都不柔软，也不浪漫。她在主打歌中唱道：“该死/我的男子汉/床第之欢如此欢愉/我爱你三字差点被我脱口而出（引自网易云）”，轻柔的钢琴声轻轻衬着她的歌声。在下面的歌曲中，Lana Del Rey清晰地描绘了她的语言想要构建的目标—一个有趣而放荡的“自我厌恶的诗人”，抱怨着自己评论时事时词穷。正如Lana Del Rey歌中的许多男人一样，她毫不避讳地称这位诗人同样缺乏幽默感，但是你要是多和他相处又感觉还不错。她在歌中问道：“当我本可以将你拥有之时/为何还要等待最好的时机（引自网易云）”，她仿佛在说找到一个更好的使她不再忧伤的人并不现实。
On ‘Love Song’, a gorgeous track that drifts on stroked piano notes and the ghostly echo of strings, things are a little better. “Oh, be my once in a lifetime,” she murmurs serenely, as if she’s whispering her desires to a sleeping lover. ‘Mariners Apartment Complex’, which swells and strips back like the tide, and the dark, driving ‘California’ find her offering to hold someone up and guide them through gloomier days (“You don’t ever have to be stronger than you really are/When you’re lying in my arms,” she promises on the latter), while ‘Happiness Is A Butterfly’ has her almost nihilistically accepting a tragic fate. “If he’s a serial killer then what’s the worst/That can happen to a girl who’s already hurt?” she asks with the air of someone always expecting the worst. “If he’s as bad as they say, then I guess I’m cursed.”
在“Love Song（爱歌）”中，钢琴的音符轻缓地跳跃，琴弦声如幽灵般萦绕耳畔，整首歌曲就这样缓缓飘荡，所有的意象都显得更加美好。“请成为我生命中的唯一（引自网易云）”，她宁静而虔诚地祈祷，仿佛对着睡梦中的情人耳语。在此前的单曲“Mariners Apartment Complex（水手公寓）”中，歌声有如潮水层层递进，来回反复，而黑暗则驱使着“California（加利福尼亚州）”找到她自己，并指导他们度过阴暗的日子（“你不必刻意比本真的自己更加强大/当你就躺在我的臂弯（引自网易云）”她在歌曲中这样承诺道）。然而“Happiness Is A Butterfly（幸福是一只蝴蝶）”则使她近乎虚无主义地接受了这悲剧的命运。“若他是冷血的连环杀手那么还有什么事更糟的呢/还有什么更糟的会发生在这个已经受伤的女孩身上（引自网易云）”她带着一种总是有人期待着最糟糕的事情的语气质问道，“若他真如人言所谓的坏/那我猜我定已被诅咒过（引自网易云）”。
Overall, ‘Norman fucking Rockwell!’ isn’t a surprising record – it’s a logical next step for Del Rey to take in a journey that’s seen her grow from hip-hop-flecked pop to bohemian folk. It would be easy for it to feel like Lana Del Rey-by-numbers but she avoids that trap by making something filled with beauty that subtly moves her sound on, ushering her into territory marked “timeless”. For anyone who thought her team-up with Jack Antonoff, a now omnipresent figure in big female pop records (Taylor Swift, Lorde) and this album’s producer, would mean the Bleachers frontman’s brand of crystalline euphoria being injected into the mix, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything here feels entirely Lana, exactly as you’d want.
总的来说，《Norman fucking Rockwell!》这张专辑并非令人惊艳。 Lana Del Rey 从hip-hop-flecked流行音乐到波西米亚民谣，她自然会向这一步发展。这张专辑很容易变成她按着专辑发行数字往下排的产物，但是Lana Del Rey巧妙地避免了这样一个陷阱，而是赋予了这张专辑流淌在她声音中的美感，从而将其带入一个“永恒”的世界。这张唱片的制作人Jack Antonoff现在家喻户晓，他曾为包括Taylor Swift和Lorde在内的几位著名女歌手担任制片人。很多人认为Lana Del Ley与他的合作意味着这张专辑将会融入Jack组办的the Bleachers乐队的音乐风格，即纯粹的快乐，但事实远非如此。专辑中的每首歌听起来都很Lana，正如大家所想要的一样。
Just because ‘NFR!’ isn’t entirely unexpected doesn’t mean there aren’t any moments that catch you off guard though. For starters, there’s a pretty faithful cover of Sublime’s ‘Doin’ Time’, originally recorded for a documentary about the Long Beach ska-punk band. Del Rey’s version has more of a mystical air to it, but still contains echoes of the original’s dubby grit woven into its witchy atmosphere.
尽管这张专辑还算中规中矩，但是这并不意味着它没有一些出人意料的东西。这张专辑里涵盖了Sublime歌曲“Doin Time”的翻唱，这首歌曲开始是为了纪录长滩的朋克乐队。Del Rey的翻唱版本加入了更多神秘的风格，同时又保留了歌曲一些最初的特点。
Then, there’s the little utterances that are littered throughout the record that you wouldn’t bat an eyelid to with anyone else but feel odd given how closely linked the person singing them here is with nostalgia and vintage Americana. On ‘The Greatest’ (maybe one of the greatest songs she’s ever written), she sings, “the culture is lit and I’ve had a ball” in a tone that could be incredibly sincere or eye-rolling sarcasm. As the album comes to an end, she throws in a quick nod to modern technology, purring, “Hello, it’s the most famous woman you know on the iPad” on the tender waltz of ‘Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have – But I Have It’.
其次，也许你认为这张专辑不足为奇，但考虑到演唱者Lana Del Rey对美国经典歌曲的怀念之情，你会发现这张专辑有些出人意料。在“The Greatest（最伟大的人）”（或许这是Lana Del Rey写过的最伟大的歌）中，她非常庄严、极尽讽刺地唱道：“人类的文化之火已经点燃/我情愿尽情享乐（引自网易云）”。专辑到结尾处，她快速地提了一下现代科技，在歌曲中轻声唱道：“嗨，这是你认识地iPad上最富有名誉的女人（引自网易云）”。
That she veers from the ultra-modern to references to Sylvia Plath and photographer Slim Aarons, and from Laurel Canyon folk to trembling psych solos, on an album named after American author and illustrator Norman Rockwell only seem to prove the point she’s trying to make in her Twitter bio. Lana Del Rey is large – she contains multitudes, and the way she balances and embodies them on her fifth album is nothing short of stunning.
她从超现代主义转而借鉴Sylvia Plath和摄影师Slim Aarons的风格，她从月桂谷的民谣风转向战栗的内心独奏，这是Lana Del Rey在她的第五张专辑中实现的转变，这张专辑以美国作家和插画家Norman Rockwell命名，似乎仅仅是为了证明她在推特的个人简介中提到的东西。Lana Del Rey的确海纳百川—她包罗万象，她在这张专辑中平衡并展现自己多种风格的方式简直令人叹为观止。
注：Laurel Canyon（月桂谷）是位于好莱坞的一个桃花源式的地点,1968年夏天,那里成为了摇滚青年的公社,也是原创力的温床。
