【译】叉婊Pitchfork评 Lorde 2017年单曲《Perfect Places》（完美之地）
翻译：Nomanlandever
Imperfection is always a virtue in Lorde’s world—whether it’s the “incorrect songwriting” of her fantastically nonlinear banger “Green Light,” her unchosen solitude on “Liability,” or the manic expressive dancing these new songs inspire within her. She has said that her upcoming second album, Melodrama, charts the trajectory of a single house party, which is a little funny in this context—the searching introspection of these songs doesn't quite scream “rager” yet. But Lorde is a songwriter who still vividly celebrates out-of-step self-possession.
在Lorde的世界里，不完美的瑕疵永远是画龙点晴之处。无论是“非正常模式作曲”的幻想非线性结构神曲《Green Light》，只剩她行只影单的《Liability》，还是这些新歌在她内心激发出的狂躁且富于表现力的舞蹈。她谈到她即将发行的第二张专辑《Melodrama》描绘了一次家庭聚会的情景，在以下文字中显得有些滑稽——这些歌曲中的自我探索，自我反省并未显现出完全的尖叫“狂怒”。但Lorde还是一位能把超乎理性的多彩情感写的绘声绘色的歌曲创作者。
Where does the party end? Melodrama closer “Perfect Places” cuts to the 3 a.m. heart-to-heart. The track slides in on a spacious, charcoal beat à la Pure Heroine’s “Team,” but reality has grown crueler since then. In “Perfect Places,” Lorde’s heroes are dying; she can’t stand the headlines; the weather is disagreeable. The world around is becoming less recognizable, and how to cope? “Now I can’t stand to be alone,” she sings.
派对何时收场?《Melodrama》收尾曲《Perfect Places》将此终于凌晨3点的谈心话语。歌曲开头与《Pure Heroine》里的歌曲《Team》的辽阔的木炭节奏很相似，但之后的实际走向更为无情残酷，Lorde的英雄战士们消失殆尽；她不能忍受头条新闻；天气阴沉。周遭的世界越来越错综复杂，该怎样应对呢？“Now I can’t stand to be alone,” 她唱道。
If there is an argument to be made for partying as a mechanism of survival, this Lorde song bolsters it. “Perfect Places” is about the extents we go to in order to feel more alive, but it spares no details of “graceless,” grotesque real life—the consequences of “nights spent off our faces.” The promise of the house party is so rarely fulfilled: At any age, you are unlikely to find utopia in a drink and a stranger. By the end of the song, with the raspy inflection of experience, Lorde asks, “What the fuck are perfect places anyway?” There are none. But the path to figuring that out comes close.
如果这里有场关于“为了生活而选择虚伪狂欢”的讨论，Lorde这首歌引申出的话题。尽管《Perfect Places》讲述的是我们为感到真正“活着”而做的尝试，但它也未忽略对不光彩的怪诞现实生活的描写—— “nights spent off our faces.”的后果。家庭聚会的承诺很少兑现：无论什么年龄，你都不太可能在酒精或陌生人中找到乌托邦之地，在歌曲结尾，Lorde带着一种刺耳的语调，问道: “What the fuck are perfect places anyway?答案是没有，但只要明白这一点，你便会更可能接触到通往完美之地的道路。
