【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Big Thief 2019年专辑《U.F.O.F.》
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：Peter D
审译：Lynn Liu
排版：Peter D
Big Thief are their own small ecosystem: Guitarist Buck Meek, bassist Max Oleartchik, drummer James Krivchenia, and Adrianne Lenker, the singer and oxygen of the Brooklyn quartet, whose lyrics can, among other things, bind all that is living and has ever lived together at the cellular level. Their music is a network of wood and wire, uncanny in its ability to sound undiscovered, like you’re stumbling upon a new species of folk rock with every song. And because they work so well as an organism, the band has a way of giving value to things that hang damp and wrinkled in our world. In the hands of Big Thief, emotion, dreams, nature, memory, even acoustic guitars are artifacts of immense size and power.
Big Thief这支乐队本身就像是一个小小的生态系统：吉他手Buck Meek，贝斯手Max Oleartchik，鼓手James Krivchenia，以及主唱Adrianne Lenker，她是这支布鲁克林四人乐队赖以生存的氧气，而她的歌词便是把这个小生态系统中所有存在过的事物从细胞水平上紧紧联系在一起的利器之一。他们的音乐就像是用木头和钢丝拉起来的围栏网架，有着让人听起来总像是在聆听未知音乐的奇妙力量，在听每一首歌的时候就像偶然发现了一个全新的民谣摇滚流派。而也正是因为这支乐队总能像是一个完整的有机体一样完美配合，他们总能找到办法让那些在我们的生活中看起来破旧阴冷的东西熠熠生辉。在Big Thief的手中，无论是情感、梦想，还是回忆，甚至是木吉他，都变成了由他们自己所创造的大尺寸且蕴含能量的事物。
This power that Big Thief give to the natural (and supernatural) defines their third and undoubtedly best album, U.F.O.F., a mesmerizing flood of life filtered down into a concentrated drip. It’s weird in the literary new weird sense: fantastical, alien; it is an unknown presence. Spend time with this album and soon there is no tempo but Big Thief’s trot, no voice but Lenker’s whisper, you are in a now-but-then, a here-but-there. Guitar lines are Mobius strips, basslines lead you off the map, and the drums feel less like Krivchenia is hitting them and more like he is lifting sounds out of them. A dazzling record, no doubt, but the boundless joy comes from its glacial restraint, from sensing all that lies beneath its surface and all that goes unsung.
这种Big Thief赋予自然（和超自然）事物的力量决定了他们的第三张专辑——毫无疑问也是最好的专辑——《U.F.O.F.》就是把迷人的生命洪流浓缩成了精制的一滴。专辑给人以文学上“新怪诞主义”的怪异感：既梦幻，又陌生；像是一种完全未知的存在。聆听这张专辑，很快，除了Big Thief的节奏，你听不见任何节拍；除了Lenker的低语，你听不见任何声音，你既处于现在，又身处未来；既在这里，又漂流到无边无际之所。吉他声如莫比乌斯环无始无终，贝司声引你去向无名之处，鼓声听起来甚至不像是Krivchenia在打鼓，而是把声音从鼓中升华。毫无疑问，这是一张炫目的专辑，但是就像那些海面之下的冰川，那些表层以下、那些没有直接唱出来的部分，能给我们带来无边无际的快乐。
The mystery of U.F.O.F. comes in part from Lenker’s lonely and elliptical verse, like Emily Dickinson if she picked up a copy of Court and Spark. The darkness that defined Big Thief’s first two albums—the abuse and stalkers on 2016’s Masterpiece, the trauma and railroad spikes to the skull on 2017’s Capacity—has either evaporated or taken refuge deep in the subtext. What were once vivid scenes Between lovers, mothers, and children are now rendered more dreamlike and misty, as if observed in the distance through an attic window. On the title track, seasons bend and maps turn blue, as Lenker waves goodbye to her “UFO friend” and sings that the best kiss she ever had was the “flickering of water so clear and so bright,” an image so indelible she revisits the “kiss of water” a few songs later. There are few greater pleasures than following Lenker’s pen to her places of solitude.
《U.F.O.F.》的神秘一部分来自于Lenker孤独又隐晦的唱段，仿佛Emily Dickinson（译者注：美国著名女诗人）看到了《Court and Spark》（译者注：美国著名女唱作歌手Joni Mitchell的专辑）。定义了Big Thief前两张专辑的黑暗元素——2016年的《Masterpiece》中的虐待与跟踪，2017年的《Capacity》中的创痛和头骨中的生锈道钉——现在已化为乌有，或是深深藏匿在弦外之音里。那些曾经栩栩如生的恋人们、母亲们与孩子们之间的场景现在被以更虚无缥缈的方式传达，就好像是从很远的阁楼上的窗户中望见的。在专辑同名曲中，季节扭转，地图变蓝，Lenker向着她的“UFO friend（外星朋友）”挥手告别，并唱到她曾有过的最美好的吻，是“水中的闪光，那么清澈，那么明亮”；这幅图像留下的记忆太过深刻，于是她在几首歌后再次回顾了这“水之吻”。几乎没有什么比跟随着Lenker的笔走进她的独处之地更让人感到愉悦了。
In keeping with tradition, Lenker populates her songs with people, avatars, or named vessels for parts of her personality: Jodi, Betsy, Jenni, Violet, Caroline. But more verdant on U.F.O.F. are the creatures that surround them: circling doves and lonesome loons, worms and robins, fruit bats and flies, recurring motifs of the silkworm and the moth. Lenker’s writing suggests a vast consciousness, a direct line Between the inner self and the outer world. On “Orange,” hound dogs crow and pigeons fall like snowflakes, but the surreal places she travels only end back at a place of raw emotional clarity—the fragile orange wind, the flesh crying rivers on her forearm—all of it comes back to the chorus: “Lies, lies, lies in her eyes.” Her lyrics, so exquisitely drawn, could make permanent the bond Between heartbreak and a blade of grass.
顺应传统，Lenker把她的音乐聚焦于人，化身，或是自己的起了名字的不同人格——Jodi, Betsy, Jenni, Violet, Caroline。但《U.F.O.F.》中更新鲜的是围绕着的生物：盘旋的白鸽，形单影只的潜鸟，蠕虫，知更鸟，果蝠，果蝇，反复出现的蚕与飞蛾的主题。Lenker的词展示了一片广阔的意识境界，那是自我内心和外部世界的一条明确界限。在“Orange（橘色）”中，猎狗狂吠，鸽子如雪花般坠落，但她所去的这些超现实之地最终又回到了一片纯粹又真挚的情感之中——脆弱的橙色微风，前臂像眼泪一样流出的鲜血——一切都归于副歌：“谎言，谎言，她的眼中尽是谎言。”她的歌词有着惊人的联想力，足以把心痛和一片碎玻璃永久地联系在一起。
For every color Lenker evokes on U.F.O.F.—auburn hair, black eyes, and turquoise lungs—the band provides a lush backdrop. It is clear that Big Thief perform with a governor, their Berklee training muffled beneath the creaky, simple melodies of folk music. Fleshed out by the band are two songs from Lenker’s 2018 solo album abysskiss, “From” and “Terminal Paradise.” The former is given depth by a hypnotic drum part from Krivchenia, the latter enhanced by Meek, who adds baritone harmony to Lenker’s reinvigorated vocal performance. Meek’s electric guitar work on the album is just alluring, especially the arcing feedback he adds to the show-stopping “Jenni,” which is, in fact, exactly what a big strobe-light shoegaze jam would sound like if it were made by forest elves.
对于Lenker在《U.F.O.F.》中唤起的每一种颜色——红褐色的头发，黑色的眼睛，青绿色的肺——乐队都提供了一张丰富的背景幕布。很显然，Big Thief的表现是有指挥的，他们在伯克利中的训练被压抑在那吱呀作响的简单民谣旋律中。由乐队充实的两首歌曲 “From”和“Terminal Paradise”来自Lenker2018年的个人专辑《abysskiss》。其中前一首由于Krivchenia的催眠式鼓点的加入而更具深度，后一首则因为Meek把男中音和声加进了令人振奋的Lenker的演唱，而被拔高了。Meek在专辑中的电吉他就是那么的迷人，尤其是在专辑即将结束的“Jenni”一曲中，他加入的电弧反馈效果，事实上如果盯鞋派音乐（Shoegaze）中的巨大闪光交给森林里的小精灵来完成，听起来就会是这个样子。
Some of these nearly imperceptible moments are the album’s best, a production flourish or a small crescendo that flicker like a shoal of fish. If you’ll bear with me on the comparison, it reminds of Radiohead at their most intimate, on 2007’s In Rainbows. The interlocking compositions, the points and counterpoints made by Meek, Lenker, Oleartchik, and Krivchenia have the same elegance of design. But the contraction and expansion of a Radiohead song—the way it leads to somewhere big—is contrasted by Big Thief’s subtle turns they breathe into their arrangements. The feedback hum that leads into the final chorus of “U.F.O.F” or the cluster of harmonies that creep in at the end of “Strange” are more like occurrences or phenomenons, things you rush to capture with your phone but before you get it out of your pocket they’re gone.
一些几乎是完全出人意料的时刻是这张专辑最出彩之处，像是一个制作上的花饰，或是一个像鱼群一样闪过的渐强音。如果你能容忍我的比较，这简直可以让Radiohead想起他们最亲密的那些日子，也就是2007年的《In Rainbows》。那些由Meek，Lenker，Oleartchik和Krivchenia完成的紧密关联的架构、曲调以及复调有着相同的设计上的优雅。但是Radiohead歌曲中的收缩与扩张——也是这些歌曲因我们走向更广阔空间的方式——与Big Thief在编曲中悄悄布置的微妙转向形成了鲜明对比。不管是引入“U.F.O.F” 最后一段副歌的电器反馈杂音还是“Strange”结尾处潜入的一大堆和声，都更像是那种偶然现象，你急急忙忙想要用手机抓住这个画面，可是你还没掏出手机，它们就溜走了。
It’s hard to put a finger on the exact essence of U.F.O.F. though that is part and parcel its majesty. When I think about Big Thief, I think about “deep ecology,” an environmental philosophy dating back to the 1970s that believes the value of nature is not dependent on how useful it is for human life. U.F.O.F. revels in this, an ancient system of great worth still whirring and rustling along, unbidden to the needs of our world.
你很难指出《U.F.O.F.》的确切本质，虽然这就是其庄严的重要组成。想到Big Thief，我就很容易联想到“深入生态学(Deep Ecology)”，一种可以追溯到19世纪70年代的环境哲学，其相信自然的价值并不在于它对人类的用处。《U.F.O.F.》沉醉于此，这一古老的伟大价值体系，一边呼呼作响，一边也由于对我们的世界无用而生锈衰败。
There’s also the work of the naturalist writer Rachel Carson, who, in 1941, wrote what it feels like to listen to this album when she wrote about the ocean from its shore: “To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and the flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years … is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.” The name U.F.O.F. suggests a connection to the unknown both within and without, and when Lenker sings of being called through a portal on “Jenni,” she beckons you, too.
博物学作家Rachel Carson的作品或许可以描述听这张专辑时的感受，她站在海岸上面对大海，写道：“站在大海的边缘，感受潮水退去、涌动，感受薄雾掠过巨大盐湖时的吐息，看着海鸟们在海岸线上下飞翔不知几千年……就是去了解那些像任何地球生命一样几乎是永恒的事物。”专辑名《U.F.O.F.》便暗示着那些未知之间从内至外的联系，而当Lenker在 “Jenni”的开头唱到自己被召唤时，她也在召唤你。
