【搬运译】叉婊Pitchfork重评Pavement 2010年精选专辑Quarantine the Past
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 first career-spanning Pavement compcontains their best-known songs as well as concert staples, fan favorites, andat least a couple of curveballs.
这张横跨Pavement乐队生涯的大合辑涵盖了他们最知名的歌曲，以及一些在音乐现场的主打歌、乐迷们广为流传的口碑神作，而且依旧能为我们带来惊喜。
Pavement have a fairly small catalog-- fivefull-length albums and a handful of EPs, plus a compilation of early singles.Over the past decade, their B-sides, radio sessions, and assorted rarities havebeen repackaged into a series of excellent reissues, which has made it easy tobe a Pavement completist without blowing a lot of cash. It's all veryaccessible, but it's not easy to know where to start. Quarantine the Past, thefirst-ever Pavement retrospective compilation, solves this problem by providinga cheap and easy entry point to the band that represents the breadth of theirsongbook. The best-known songs are featured-- "Cut Your Hair","Gold Soundz", "Here", "Shady Lane", "Spiton a Stranger"-- but so are concert staples, fan favorites, and at least acouple of curveballs. The sequence is non-chronological, zig-zagging throughthe catalog and evenly distributing the obvious classics throughout the runningorder.
Pavement的专辑名录可谓是相当短小——5张全场专辑、少数几张EP、还有一些早期曲目的汇编合辑。在过去的十年里，他们的一些B-sides、电台现场以及各种稀有音源被重新包装成一系列优秀的再版唱片，而这也使得人们不需要花费太多，便很容易成为Pavement乐队的全套收藏爱好者。如此轻而易举，但要知道从哪里开始并不容易。《Quarantine the Past》，有史以来第一张Pavement乐队的回顾性汇编合集解决了这一问题，为乐队的准乐迷们提供了一张简易价廉的“新手村”门票。那些最知名的曲目——“Cut Your Hair”、“Gold Soundz”、 “Here”、“Shady Lane”、“Spiton a Stranger”——都有收录其中，同时也有一些音乐现场的主打曲目、乐迷们广为流传的口碑神作，而且依旧能为我们带来惊喜。合辑中的曲序并没有依照时间顺序，它们被打散均匀地排布，那些显眼的经典曲目镶嵌其中。
It's important that a Pavement best-of notonly focus on their singles, which often erred on the side of novelty andlevity. The dark horses here are essential in sketching out the group's range,from the punky blast of "Unfair" and "Debris Slide" to theloose, stoned sound of "Heaven Is a Truck". "Grounded" ismajestic, "Shoot the Singer" is wistful, "Date With Ikea"is a suburban anthem. "Embassy Row" is like an alternate-universePavement that could compete on modern rock radio with the likes of Weezer, and"Box Elder" is a platonic ideal of simple, lo-fi indie pop. Fans ofthe band may look over the tracklisting and wonder why some of their favoritesdidn't make the cut, but every song on this thing is an unimpeachable gem, andthe collection presents a well-rounded summary of their distinct and variedbody of work.
更为重要的是，要深入了解Pavement的所谓“生涯最佳”不能仅仅关注在他们的那些知名的单曲，这些单曲往往偏向于新奇和轻松的一面。而这张合辑中的黑马——从“Unfair”和“Debris Slide”的朋克式轰炸到“Heaven Is a Truck”中松散却分量十足的声音——对勾勒出这一宏伟蓝图的轮廓至关重要。除此之外，“Grounded”更显雄伟，“Shoot the Singer”不失俏皮，“Date With Ikea”像是一首来自郊野的颂歌。“Embassy Row”像是来自另一宇宙的Pavement作品，可以在如今的摇滚电台中与Weezer等人相提并论；而“Box Elder”则是简单惬意的独立流行乐的理想状态。可能乐队的一些歌迷们仔细地浏览一下曲目表后，想知道为什么他们最喜欢的一些歌曲没有入选，但这里的每一首歌都是无可挑剔的精品，而且这套唱片对他们生涯中独特而多样的作品进行了全面的总结。
Pavement were mainly a vehicle for thesongwriting of Stephen Malkmus, who penned almost all of the band's material.In terms of rock archetypes, Malkmus is a true original. He's erudite butbratty, laid-back yet buttoned-up. He's an inscrutable goofball, a pragmaticromantic, an aloof charmer. His music is loaded with references to culturalhistory-- one of these songs is an imaginary history of R.E.M.-- but his nerdyimpulses and arty affect is consistently overwhelmed by his casual coolness.There's an impossible ease and haphazard grace to this music. A lot of bandswork very hard to make you appreciate their meticulous craft or browbeat youwith hooks, but Pavement tossed off brilliantly composed pop songs with ashambling, carefree swagger. They made it sound easy, and maybe it was. Thebest kind of genius tends to come very naturally to people, like a side effectof just being themselves. In "Frontwards", Malkmus sings "I'vegot style/ Miles and miles/ So much style that it's wasted," and that'spretty much him and his band in a nutshell.
Pavement乐队主要是Stephen Malkmus的创作载体，他几乎承办创作了乐队的所有作品。就摇滚乐的初衷而言，Malkmus是一个真正的原创者。他博学而又不失风趣，闲逸而又不失内涵。他是一个难以捉摸的沙雕、一个务实的浪漫主义者、一个高冷男神。他的音乐中充斥着对文化历史的引言——其中一首歌是想象中的R.E.M.的历史——但他的书呆子般冲动作为和文艺气息始终被他随意而为的酷感所压倒。这种音乐蕴含着一种难以置信的轻松和纷乱的优雅。许多乐队非常努力地让你欣赏他们一丝不苟的工艺，或是用些Hook试图唬住你，但Pavement则用一种随心所欲、无拘无束的大手笔挥洒出更为精彩的流行乐曲。他们让音乐听起来更加容易，也许它本来就应如此也确实如此。那些杰出的天才往往是自然而然地出现在大众视野，更像是“做真正的自己”的副作用。在“Frontwards”中，Malkmus唱道：“I've got style/ Miles and miles/ So much style that it's wasted”，这几乎就是对他和他的乐队最好的概括。
Malkmus' lyrics, central to the band'sappeal, alternate between whimsical nonsense and epigrammatic quotables. Thesongs seldom slot neatly into readily identifiable emotional states or refer tospecific experiences, instead falling into the liminal spaces between thoughtsand feelings. Malkmus' words indicate context and supply the listener with richimagery, but the real poetry is in the way his phrases flow with the melodies,and are offset by evocative guitar textures and unexpected noises. The groupnever compromised tunefulness for artiness, but mystique and abstraction wereamong their core values. In retrospect, certain lines ring out like statementsof intent-- "We need secrets," "Tricks are everything tome."
Malkmus的歌词可谓是乐队的核心吸引力，它们在异想天开的无稽之谈和附庸风雅的语录之间反复横跳。这些歌曲罕有能归入人们易识别的情绪状态，也没有提到那些可以引人共鸣的具体经历，而是落入思想和感觉之间的阈限空间。Malkmus用话语阐明背景，并为听众提供了丰富的联觉图像，但真正诗意的地方在于他词句随旋律流动的方式，并最终被令人回味的吉他波纹和出人意料的噪音所抵消。这支乐队从不会为艺术性而牺牲曲调，但神秘性和抽象性仍作为他们核心价值之一。回过头来看，先前的某些句子就像是对这一意图的陈述——“We need secrets”，“Tricks are everything tome”。
The very best Pavement songs delight incuriosity and imagination, drawing connections between images and ideas as ifeverything in the world was full of character and significance. This is part ofwhy, for example, a playful joke about the voice of Rush's lead singer in"Stereo" never gets stale. It's in the middle of a song that may aswell be a sub-genre unto itself, bouncing about gleefully, utterly fascinatedby the all the obscure details of the world. They found the magic in themundane, and could make small enthusiasms, silly in-jokes, and skewedobservations seem profound and glorious.
Pavement最好的乐曲总以好奇心和想象力为音符，在直观的图像与抽象的灵感之间建立联系，让世上的一切都更具个性和意义。这就是，例如，“Stereo”中关于Rush主唱的声音的玩笑话总能博人一笑的原因。这首本身可能是作为一个亚流派的作品，欢快地跃动着，完完全全沉浸在世上每一角落中晦涩的细节之处。他们从平凡中寻得魔力，令那些微不足道的激情、那些蠢蠢的、往往是密友间心照不宣的段子和扭转视角后眼中扭曲的世界在此刻变得深刻而辉煌。
A decade after the band's dissolution,Pavement's music has proven itself to have an evergreen quality. To be sure,it's all very much of its time and no band aside from perhaps Guided By Voicesbetter epitomizes the sound and style of 1990s indie rock, but the materialtranscends its era as much as it defines it. This compilation exists mainly toget an entry-level Pavement product on the market to coincide with theirreunion tour, but it has a value beyond crass commercial necessity. Unlikeother cross-generational legacy bands like the Pixies, Sonic Youth, and TalkingHeads, Pavement's songs fit together comfortably as a jukebox-friendly hitparade.
乐队解散十年后，Pavement的音乐已然证明了它自己的常青、不朽。可以肯定的是，这些音乐很大程度上仍属于那个它们问世的时代，除了Guided By Voices之外，想必没有哪个乐队再能更好地代表上个世纪90年代独立摇滚的声音和风尚。但同时就像它们定义了它的时代一样，这些作品也超越了它的时代。这张合辑的存在主要是为了让Pavement乐队的入门级作品再次流入市场，以配合他们的重聚巡演顺利进行，但它如今的价值已远超它本被期望的粗俗的商业需要。与其他跨时代的传统乐队，如Pixies、Sonic Youth和Talking Heads不同，Pavement的乐曲可以被惬意的随机组合在一起，变身为唱机上的热门歌曲。
Some tracks, like the Spiral Stairsshowcase "Date With Ikea" and the early EP cut "Mellow JazzDocent", shine brighter than in their original contexts, while numberslike "In the Mouth a Desert" and "Gold Soundz" come outsounding like modern standards. As much as their albums excel as unified works,no one ever needed to hear those records in full to fall in love with "CutYour Hair", "Shady Lane", or "Range Life" on MTV,college radio, or someone's mixtape. Quarantine the Past doesn't replace thealbums, but it's a highly listenable alternative that is as much a treat fornostalgic older fans as it is a valuable gateway for new listeners.
还有一些曲目，如Spiral Stairs演绎的“Date With Ikea”和早期EP中的“Mellow Jazz Docent”，比在它们原先的背景更加耀眼；同时像“In the Mouth a Desert”和“Gold Soundz”听起来更像是当下的杰作。尽管他们的专辑都是一张张听感统一的出色作品，但没有人是需要听完所有这些专辑的全部内容后，才要去爱上会在MTV、某大学广播电台或是某人mixtape中出没的“Cut Your Hair”、“Shady Lane”、“Range Life”。《Quarantine the Past》并不能取缔这些专辑，但它仍是一个可听度爆表的替代品，对那些借以怀旧的老乐迷而言仍是一种享受，对新听众来说也是一个极有价值的入门渠道。
