【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Soccer Mommy《Color Theory》（颜色理论）
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：Will Lin
校对：Joonly EC
排版：Ryan-Chopin
The second album from singer-songwriter Sophie Allison is piercing and unpredictable. In contrast to its bigger and brighter sound, the mood is grimmer, the emotional truths darker.
歌手兼创作人Sophie Allison发布个人第二张专辑。专辑人声刺耳，出人意料。人声越来越响，越来越亮，与之相比，专辑情感越来越丧，情绪越来越低落。
When Sophie Allison sings, she sounds wide-open and guarded, casual and intense, intimate and coolly removed. In her best songs as Soccer Mommy, a piercing line —“I don’t wanna be your fucking dog,” for example, from “Your Dog”—wriggles away from direct interpretation as she delivers it, turning from declaration to hypothesis. Some of the magnetism of her pop-inflected indie rock comes from the winding shape of her melodies; in their unpredictable motion, they often resemble counterpoint written to a root melody that’s been erased. But a lot of her power derives from the immediacy of her voice—when she opens her mouth it’s as if a spotlight appears.
Sophie Allison一开口，歌声张弛有度，若即若离。她以Soccer Mommy发行的最佳歌曲中有一首歌，名叫“Your Dog（你的狗）”，其中有一句用刺耳人声演唱的歌词——“我他妈不想做你的狗”。歌词直截了当，从声明转变为假说。她的流行独立摇滚很有魅力，一部分源于旋律迂回婉转。旋律推进出人意料，通常类似于在已除去的根音上采用对位法。但是，她许多力量来源于自身嗓音具有的紧迫性。她一开口，好像就会成为焦点。
The songwriting of her earliest direct-to-Bandcamp material was still hazy at the edges, but by her 2018 studio debut Clean, a world-class indie rock singer-songwriter was standing in her place. It doesn’t always happen this way, but the acclaim followed her swiftly and her fanbase multiplied. She toured with Vampire Weekend and Wilco, with Liz Phair and Paramore and Kacey Musgraves. In another era, Clean might have landed her a lucrative major-label contract. In this era, she enters the low-level managerial world of a successful indie rock band, one in which you become your own manager and booker and agent, even if you also hire and pay those people. “I’m touring for a living and I run a small business, basically,” she told the New York Times last month. “It’s a very isolating existence.”
她早期将创作素材上传到音乐营（个极简主义模块化布局，并允许音乐人充分按照自己的艺术品位和喜好进行个性化和自定义网站），这些素材仍然鲜为人知。但是，2018年她发布了录音室处女专《clean（干净）》，之后这位独立摇滚歌手兼创作人名声大噪。这样的成功并不常有，但对她而言，赞美随之涌来，粉丝数量暴涨。她给一些歌手当过巡演嘉宾，比如Vampire Weekend,Wilco,Liz Phair, Paramore以及Kacey Musgraves. 她生错了年代，否则《clean》可能早已让她签下大厂牌。在这个时代，即使是成功的独立摇滚乐队，也缺少高水准的管理团队。虽然雇了这些人，还付他们薪水，但实际上自己也得身兼数职，比如经纪人、演出负责人以及代理人。上个月，她接受《纽约时报》采访，称“自己以巡演为生，基本上也算经营一个小型公司，孤立无援。”
color theory exhibits much of the growth—and some of the growing pains—that usually attend massive transformations. She’s on Loma Vista now, home to fellow indie-label graduates like St. Vincent and Andrew Bird. It might not be Caroline or DreamWorks in the ’90s, but Allison makes the most of her opportunity, and the songs feel like a response to an exponential leap in platform and possibility.
专辑《color theory（颜色理论）》展示了许多成长，以及一些不断增多的痛苦。这些通常需要巨大的转变。她目前喜欢《Loma Vista》这张专辑，这张专辑让人想到同是独立厂牌的佼佼者St. Vincent和Andrew Bird。这可能不是上世纪九十年代的卡洛琳或梦工厂，但Allison不放过一丝一毫的机会，歌曲仿佛回应了平台和可能性上的指数跨越。
As she did on Clean, she worked with producer Gabe Wax, who has also helmed projects by the War on Drugs, Deerhunter, and other indie A-listers. Where Clean was warm and rough-hewn, the product of a careful microphone set-up and mutual trust, color theory feels dazzled with the endless creative possibilities of the studio. The drizzle of acoustic and electric guitars on “lucy” feels fine-tuned to evoke memories of The Bends-era Radiohead. On the seven-minute-plus “yellow is the color of her eyes,” layers of Mellotron, Wurlitzer, and Prophet synthesizer (all played by Allison) lend the song the sleepy-eyed sheen of shoegaze. The drums on “circle the drain” are subtly sweetened by drum machine à la the work of ’00s pop hitmakers The Matrix, and its edges shimmer with drones and synths until it resembles one of the billowing soap bubbles in the video for Sheryl Crow’s “Everyday Is a Winding Road.”
和制作《clean》一样，Allison和制作人Gabe Wax合作，一些顶级独立音乐人的作品也曾由这位制作人操刀，比如the War on Drugs 和 Deerhunter以及其他有名的独立乐手。《clean》给人纯粹的温暖， 这源于歌曲用麦克风录音，歌手和制作人相互信任。《color theory》创意无限，令人叹服。歌曲“lucy（露西）”运用不插电吉他和电吉他，恰好唤起听众对Radiohead《The Bends（潜水病）》的回忆。在长达7分多钟的歌曲“yellow is the color of her eyes（她眼中的颜色——黄）”，美乐特朗（商标名，一种计算机编程序的电子琴）、沃立舍（美国钢琴品牌）以及模拟合成器（这些都是Allison演奏的）赋予歌曲一种睡眼惺忪般的自赏派（80 年代末90 年代初的英伦独立音乐的一个流派）风格。歌曲“circle the drain（榨干）”中运用的电子鼓使其更具吸引力，而这是仿照本世纪00年代的大热电影《The Matrix（黑客帝国）》制作。歌曲尖锐的声音与合成器交相辉映，直到其类似Sheryl Crow “Everyday Is a Winding Road（每一天都是一条蜿蜒之路）”的录影带中往上飞的肥皂泡。
In deliberate contrast to the bright sound, the mood is grimmer, the emotional truths darker. Allison has said the album depicts three states of being, represented by three colors: blue for depression, yellow for mental and physical illness, gray for mortality. Clean began with the urgency of youth, in the moment of a break-up; the first lyric of color theory opener “bloodstream” is wearier. Observing the “pale girl staring through the mirror,” she remembers the way blood used to flow “into my rosy cheeks” before she looks down: “Now a river runs red from my knuckles into the sink,” she sings, her voice flat and resigned. She is quick to qualify and complicate the alarming image (“Maybe it’s just a dream”) but the feeling resounds: color theory pitches headlong into the anomie of early-20s depression—the moment in adulthood when the bright colors of adolescence start to dim for the first time and it occurs to you, with dull alarm, that the rest of it might be like this.
情感越来越丧，情绪越来越低落，和明亮的嗓音形成鲜明的对比。Allison表示，专辑用三种颜色代表三种状态：蓝色是忧郁，黄色是身心疾病，灰色是死亡。《clean》开篇就让我们感受到一个失恋男青年的疯狂。相比之下，《color theory》第一首歌“bloodstream（血液）”的第一句歌词更让人厌倦。看着这个“苍白的女孩照镜子”，她记起自己的血液曾经如何流入她“红润脸颊”，然后她情绪变得低落。她唱道：“现在这股血流从我的指节开始一点点让我沦陷（歌词源于网易云）”，嗓音单调。但很快，她缓和并复杂化令人担心的映像（“也许这只是场梦”），但情绪又向她袭来。《color theory》直指社会失范，而这种失范体现在20岁出头的年轻人感到沮丧，这说明青春靓丽的年轻人第一次感到暗淡，还担心接下来的人生可能依旧如此。
As a lyricist, Allison keeps her footing in this more internal landscape. She has a skill for following winding syntax to a sharp point: “I am fake it till you make it in a can/And you have a calmness that I could never understand,” she sings on “Royal Screw Up,” a song that also includes the frank admission, “I am the problem for me/Now and always.” You can trace her admiration of Taylor Swift in how she follows a standard-issue pop-song metaphor until it yields a moment of truth: “I try to break your walls but all I ever end up breaking is your bones/And the bruises show/Standing in the living room talking as you’re staring at your phone/It’s a cold I’ve known,” she sings on “Nightswimming.” The paired couplets are neat as a folded napkin, and the alienation—who hasn’t felt dismissed by a brandished smartphone?—is palpable.
作为一名作词人，Allison一直涉足内心世界。她不拘泥句法，技术炉火纯青。她在“Royal Screw Up”中唱道：“我会伪装直到一切成真/而你总是有着一种我无法理解的平静（歌词源于网易云）”。这首歌也包含着自我坦白：“我就是个麻烦/一直如此”。你能发现她仰慕Taylor Swift，因为她运用了标准的流行乐隐喻，让人感觉到片刻的真实。她在“Night swimming（夜泳）”中唱道：“想要击下你的心墙/但却破碎了你的骨头/伤口浮现/我站在客厅/对你说着话，你却盯着手机/我知道我们在冷战”。这些对句工整如折好的餐巾，表达的疏离感显而易见。有谁不会因对方拿手机威胁而感到被抛弃呢？
If there is anything missing from color theory, it’s a sense of intensity and surprise. Many of the songs chug along around the same midtempo, with a similar first-drum-lesson beat. Her choices are intentional; Allison has cited “bops” from her childhood like Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” and Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” as inspiration, and she has borrowed some of these songs’ chunky simplicity for her arrangements. The varied strum patterns that gave Clean’s songs their sinuous, lived-in feel have given way mostly to chugging down-stroked power chords, and the palette is bright, clean, and uncluttered. But she doesn’t tap into these anthems’ urge to shout from the rafters, even if what you’re shouting is that you’re desperate, rock-bottom, about to give up: The songs on color theory sometimes feels like a series of 8-point-font text messages projected onto highway billboards.
如果说《color theory》缺点什么，那应该是紧张感和新鲜感。大多数歌曲都是中速节奏，鼓的节奏也相似，好像初学者一样。但Allison有意为之，她从幼年时代一些歌手采用的“博普爵士乐”中得到启发，比如Natalie Imbruglia的“Torn（纠结）”，Sheryl Crow的“If It Makes You Happy（假如它使你快乐）”以及Avril Lavigne的“Complicated（超复杂）”，并且借鉴其中一部分歌曲简洁的特点为自己所用。不同的拨弦方法赋予《Clean》中歌曲灵动之感，熟悉的感觉已然消失，取而代之的是向下拨动的强力和弦。但这声音却明亮干净且简洁有力。她没有把这些赞歌含有的欲望声嘶力竭地表达出来，尽管你要表达自己很绝望，碰到低谷，想要放弃。《color theory》中的歌曲有时候就像高速公路广告牌上用8号字体写成的一连串讯息。
On the penultimate song “stain,” she casts off most of the instruments and leans into the microphone again, just her fingers gripping a pick and a backing of tense silence. The music instantly becomes corporeal, urgent—she has yet to locate this power within the glossy peaks of new sound she has churned up. “Now I’m always stained, like the sheets in my parents’ house/Yeah I’m always stained/And it’s never coming out,” she sings, and as the song cuts out—neatly, at exactly three minutes, one of the album’s shortest—your nerves jangle with the humming of the strings, your gut churns in simpatico with Allison’s.
专辑倒数第二首歌“stain（污点）” 中，Allison只用了很少的乐器，再次使用麦克风录音，仅用拨片弹奏，伴奏给人紧张的寂静之感。音乐突然变得有形，给人紧迫感，她还未将这一力量运用在她搅动的新声中。她唱道：“现在我的心上有一滩污渍,如同我父母家里的床垫/是的，我被污染了/而我却再也无法逃离（歌词源于网易云）”。正如这首歌恰好3分钟，是专辑中时长最短的一首，琴弦的嗡嗡声令你神经紧张，正如Allison一样。
Correction: An earlier version of this review mistakenly referenced New Pornographers and Barenaked Ladies as being signed to Loma Vista. They have since been removed.
更正:这篇乐评的早期版本错误地将 New Pornographers和d Barenaked Ladies 引用为 Loma Vista的签名。它们已被移除。
