【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Christine and the Queens专辑《La vita nuova EP》

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）

原作者：Anna Gaca

翻译：Lynn Liu

校对：Whitney.L

排版：Ryan-Chopin

The singer and producer’s dazzling new EP is a subtle gesture about grace and interiority and the illusion of effortlessness, the same attributes that mark Chris as a true star.

这位歌手兼制作人推出了一张耀眼的新专辑，这张专辑可以说是优雅与内在美的微妙体现，也显示出漫不经心的幻觉，这些特质同样让Chris成为一个真正的明星。

Chris is gentle and tough, masculine and feminine, subtle and direct, a pop singer with high-art ambitions. La vita nuova, a five-song EP and its accompanying short film, is about the psychic effort required to maintain the balance. On the cover, Chris appears pensive, part Ziggy Stardust, part Degas portrait. She calls it a project about vulnerability, though it’s also about grace and interiority and the illusion of effortlessness, the same attributes that mark her as a true star.

Chris温柔而坚强，阳刚与阴柔并存，难以捉摸却直接，她也是一个有着很高艺术抱负的流行歌手。包含五首歌的EP《La vita nuova》及其配套短片，讲述了维持平衡所需的精神努力。在专辑封面上，Chris显得若有所思，这个专辑封面可以说是《Ziggy Stardust》的封面和Degas肖像画的结合体。她称这张专辑是对脆弱的刻画，它也是优雅与内在美的微妙体现，显示出漫不经心的幻觉，这些特质同样让让Chris成为一个真正的明星。

If you’re looking for the party, you’re in the wrong place: Shorter and sadder than 2018’s Chris, La vita nuova has fewer big synth swoops and slower tempos. Produced by Chris alongside debut albumcollaborator Ash Workman, its cool, aquatic surface ripples with subtle vocal manipulations and whispery background samples. “People, I’ve been sad” is an open apology to a world its author can’t bear to face, like a note from the friend who misses you but still won’t return your calls. “You know the feeling,” Chris offers, opening a door within herself to reveal a mirror.

如果你在想找一些派对的音乐，那你听错歌了：这张专辑比她2018年推出的专辑时长更短、也更悲伤，《La vita nuova》中很少使用合成器音色，而且节奏更慢。她的新专由她与首张专辑的合作伙伴Ash Workman共同制作。这张专辑就好比一潭静水，凉爽的水面与微妙的嗓音和耳语的背景采样产生反应，泛起阵阵涟漪。“People, I’ve been sad”是对她无法面对的世界的公开道歉，就像一个想念你但不回你电话的朋友给你的留言。“你知道那种感觉，”Chris唱道，她打开了自己的心门，露出了一面镜子。

Her imagistic writing remains spare as ever, making a game of revealing concealed emotion by rendering it in multiple languages. Last year was the year of “Gone,” Chris and Charli XCX’s duet about sadness and sexual tension; the Caroline Polachek duet “La vita nuova” is a worthy successor. Their verses in Italian are a mutual affirmation of passion, but the chorus, in English, mourns the partner who won’t dare to show their love. “Heartbreakers,” Chris cries, “I never take their answer for sure.”

她的意象主义写作一如既往地简洁，通过使用多种语言呈现来揭示隐藏的情感。去年，她与Charli XCX合作推出“Gone”，这首歌唱出了悲伤与性张力。她与Caroline Polachek合作演唱了“La vita nuova”，这首歌可以说是另一合作典范。其中的意大利语歌词是对激情的相互肯定，而在英语歌词中，则是对不敢示爱的伴侣的惋惜。“这群芳纵火犯”，Chris唱道，“我从来不信他们的鬼话。”

Throughout, she seems like someone who’s just emerged from a breakup, still sorting through the raw emotion. “Do you think there’s only one thing to do/To write a song about you?” she asks on “Mountains,” a wistful sketch of a lapsed connection. Other times her stance is not so clear-cut: Perhaps the selfish, possessive lover she addresses in “Je disparais dans tes bras” is not a lover, but the flattening gaze of fame—not merely the pain of unrequited love, but of the impossibility of being her full self in the eyes of others.

整张专辑从头到尾，她就像一个刚从分手中走出来的人，还在整理自己一开始的情感。“Do you think there’s only one thing to do/To write a song about you?（你认为我就只有一件事可以做/去一首关于你的歌吗?）”她在“Mountains”中问道，这是一首刻画逝去关系的苦情歌。有时，她的立场不是很明确:也许是自私的,她在“Je disparais dans tes bras”中强调占有欲强烈的爱人不是一个好情人,但名声压扁的目光不仅仅包含了单恋的痛苦，也展现了别人眼中的她自己。

Most spectacular is the accompanying short film, a five-song music-video narrative set in Paris’ sumptuous Palais Garnier opera house. Directed by Colin Solal Cardo, the story is a supernatural drama of a performer’s life, following Chris through a rooftop dance solo and a group rehearsal to a climactic vampire ball that pairs her with Polachek for a lusty duet. Chris appears in virginal white and then in shiny black pleather, a heavily symbolic heroine uniting the sacred and profane.

最引人注目的是与专辑配套的短片，这是一部包含5首歌mv的叙事电影，故事发生在巴黎豪华的加尼尔宫歌剧院。这部超自然的影片由Colin Solal Cardo执导，讲述了一位演员的故事。Chris在屋顶上独舞，紧接着是她与Polachek精力充沛的合唱，伴着高潮迭起的群舞，这是为吸血鬼舞会而进行的排练。Chris在短片中穿了圣洁的白色长裙，也穿了黑色的皮外套，化身成一位象征意义很强的女英雄，将神圣与世俗结合在一起。

It is astounding to watch Chris’ particular vision play out in this location—a genre iconoclast defining her own scene in a lavish 19th-century Parisian theater. It recalls a story from her youth that she relayed to The Guardian a few years ago, how once, at drama school where only boys were permitted to direct plays, she defied the administration by staging her own. With its Thriller-esque flash and tomato-red fake blood, the film La vita nuova looks like a kind of theater-kid fever dream. But that’s what theater is for: The emotions that feel too unruly, too ambiguous, to survive in the real world. They need space, just as dancers do, and Chris’ could fill the house.

令人震惊的是，Chris独特的想象力在这个地方上演——一个奢华的19世纪巴黎剧院里，打破传统的风格定义了她自己的场景。这让人想起几年前她向《卫报》讲述的她年轻时候的故事：有一次，在一所只允许男生导演戏剧的戏剧学校里，她不顾校方的反对，上演了自己的戏剧。凭借惊悚式的闪光和番茄红色的假血，这部短片看起来就像剧院孩子模糊不清的梦境。但这就是戏剧的意义:情感太难驾驭，太模糊，无法在现实世界中生存。它们需要空间，就像舞者一样，而Chris的情感可以填满整个空间。