【搬运译】Pitchfork评Snail Mail 2021年专辑《Valentine》

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：豆目豆科 

Lindsey Jordan’s exquisite second album documents love in all stages, but mostly in disrepair. She takes on a larger and poppier sound while keeping her songwriting dazzlingly sharp and passionate. 

Lindsey Jordan精致的第二张专辑记录了各个阶段的爱情，但着重描绘了爱的伤痕。她采用了更直白和更流行的声音，但同时也保持了她词曲创作中令人眼花缭乱的锐利与激情。

Lindsey Jordan’s second album as Snail Mail is for anyone who’s been bloodied by Cupid’s arrow. Offered up by a self-professed but seemingly unlucky romantic, Valentine documents love in all stages, but mostly in disrepair. Its palette extends beyond pinks and reds: There’s the envious green of seeing an old love with someone new, the consuming black of bottoming out, and, occasionally, the clear blue of weightless bliss, however fleeting. Throughout, Jordan adheres to the credo that she first announced as a rhetorical question—“Is there any better feeling than coming clean?”—on Lush, the searing debut that turned her from a suburban teenager with wicked guitar chops into a beloved indie frontwoman.

Lindsey Jordan以Snail Mail发行的第二张专辑是为那些被丘比特之箭射中而受伤的人准备的。由一个自诩但似乎并不如愿的浪漫主义者讲述，《Valentine》记录了各个阶段的爱情，但着重描绘了爱的伤痕、残缺。它的色彩超越了粉红的界限——目睹旧爱与她的新欢在一起时令人羡妒的绿色、低谷期的黑色，以及属于偶然间小确幸的清澈亮蓝，无论它多么短暂。自始至终，Jordan坚持她最初以反问形式宣布的信条——“Is there any better feeling than coming clean?”——在《Lush》这张炙手可热的处女作中，她从一个有着异于常人的吉他天赋的郊区少年成长为一个受万众喜爱的独立女艺术家。

Jordan, now 22, says she fielded 15 different label offers while she was still in high school. After signing with Matador and releasing Lush in 2018, she became a public figure and a magnet for parasocial attachment, drawing hordes of fans who saw themselves in her queerness and keen sensitivity. Amid this whirlpool of attention, Jordan found that her personal boundaries were too permeable; the overexposure caused enough harm to land her in rehab last year, an experience she mentions offhandedly once on Valentine. Afterwards, she handed her social media accounts to an assistant and hired a media trainer to help her deflect prying journalists. “Those parasitic cameras, don’t they stop to stare at you?” she sings over a foreboding synth in Valentine’s opening bars, pointing to the parts of success that give her pause.

如今已经22岁的Jordan，在她读高中时就接连收到15个不同厂牌的橄榄枝。在与Matador签约并在2018年发行《Lush》之后，她正式成为了一个公众人物，化作准依恋型社会的一块磁铁，吸引了大量的粉丝，他们从她的酷儿特质和敏锐的情感体验中看到了自己。在这种关注的漩涡中，Jordan发现她的个人界限太过易于侵透；过度曝光造成的伤害甚至让她在去年进入康复中心，她曾在同名曲“Valentine”中不经意地提到这一经历。之后，她选择把她的社交媒体账户交付给一个助理管理，同时聘请了一个媒体助理来帮助她抵御记者的窥探。“Those parasitic cameras, don’t they stop to stare at you?”她在“Valentine”的开篇伴着一个异样合成器唱道，谈到也正是所谓的成功让她停滞不前。

But now that she has patched the holes from which her personal life seeped out into the public, her music, more than ever, functions as the release valve. The title track and lead single sounds like the inevitable eruption: Jordan blows up the chorus with an impassioned wail (“Why’d you wanna erase me, darling valentine?”) and surging guitar, her loudness proof that she will not be erased, damn it. Valentine retains the exquisite vulnerability that made Snail Mail’s first record so compelling, but Jordan’s sound is more forceful, her touchstones more varied, her writing more toned. On Lush, she explored the expressive but limited possibilities of a three-piece rock band; on Valentine, along with co-producer Brad Cook (Indigo De Souza, Waxahatchee), she flirts with pop—sharpening her hooks, reaching for the synths and strings. Where parts of Lush revealed themselves slowly, saving their secrets for intent listening, Valentine is more immediate, grabbing your gaze and refusing to let go for 32 straight minutes.

但如今，她已经修补了她个人生活中被公众渗入的漏洞，她的音乐比以往任何时候都更能发挥解压、释放情绪的作用。标题曲和主打歌听起来像是难以压抑的情感爆发。Jordan用激昂的哀号（“Why’d you wanna erase me,darling valentine?”）、副歌中炸开了锅的汹涌吉他以及她的响亮歌声证明她不会被抹去。《Valentine》保留了使Snail Mail首张唱片引人注目的精致的易碎性，但同时Jordan的声音愈加有力，她在其中的新尝试更加多样，她的词作更加调和。在《Lush》中，她开拓了三人摇滚乐队的表现力界限，但荒地依然有限；而在《Valentine》中，她与联合制作人Brad Cook（Indigo De Souza，Waxahatchee）一起，与流行音乐调情——锐化她的Hook，同时触向合成器和弦乐。当《Lush》的某些部分缓慢地揭示自己，把它们的秘密暗藏寻觅心相印的聆听时，《Valentine》更为直接，抓住你的目光，并在接下来的32分钟内拒不撒手。

Swept up in the early-pandemic migration that sent scores of twentysomethings back to their parents’ homes, Jordan wrote much of Valentine on the floor of her childhood bedroom, the same place that she penned her early songs of longing and languishing. Now as then, love is an all-consuming force in her music, but she writes with a deeper understanding of its destructive potential and a willingness to articulate it in arresting terms. Romance and alcohol are twin toxins on Valentine, each amplifying the other’s damaging effects, each informing Jordan’s perspective on the other. “You wanna leave a stain, like a relapse does,” she sings to a ruinous former flame on “Ben Franklin.” On “Headlock,”she’s mid-bender and missing an ex, “drinking just to taste her mouth.” A wordless murmur of stacked, sighing harmonies breathes relief into the song, only to be followed by the album’s darkest material, a wrenching admission of suicidal ideation.

在早期新冠疫情的风潮中，许多20多岁的年轻人不得不回到家乡、拥入老母亲的怀抱，Jordan就是在她童年卧室的地板上完成了《Valentine》的大部分内容，这也是她早期写下那些充斥着渴望和慵懒歌曲的地方。现在和那时一样，爱情在她的音乐中化作一种被完全消耗殆尽的力量，她在写作时对其破坏性潜能有了更深的理解，并愿意用引人注目的术语来阐述它。对《Valentine》而言，浪漫和酒精就像是孪生毒素，他们彼此放大了彼此的破坏性影响，彼此都左右着Jordan对另者的看法。“You wanna leave a stain, like a relapse does,”她在“Ben Franklin”中对一个杀千刀的前女友唱道。而在“Headlock”中，她正沉浸在对前任的思念中，唱着“drinking just to taste her mouth”。一段无言的喃喃自语、一声无奈的叹息和音为这首歌迎来了解脱，但紧接着便是专辑中最黑暗的部分——一个对令人心碎的自杀念头的承认。

Valentine takes us fearlessly to these extremes. “I have a really hard time writing from any place other than complete honesty within myself,” Jordan said recently, noting the lasting impact of her childhood compulsion to confess. But talking about music strictly in terms of confession often erases the skill that undergirds it, particularly when that skill belongs to young women. To confess is to tell, yet conventional wisdom says it’s better to show; Jordan does both, painting vivid images and annotating them with earnest declarations. In a haze of thudding percussion and distortion on “Automate,” we find her unsteady at a party, fumbling to kiss a stranger and pretend it’s someone else. “I’ll never find another love like this,” she laments, a recurring sentiment in her music. On “Mia,” she walks us down Broadway and spots an ex preening on the way to her new partner’s apartment. “Lost love so strange,” Jordan warbles over orchestral swells, an assessment that feels profound in her gripping voice, always straining and seamed.

《Valentine》义无反顾的把我们引领到这些极端的领域。最近，Jordan在采访中说道：“自己除了从完全的坦诚出发，真的很难从其他任何地方起笔创作。”她还谈到她童年时那些被强迫袒露自己的经历难以磨灭的影响。但是，当刻意地以高要求从忏悔的角度来谈论音乐时，往往会略去支撑它的技巧，特别是当这种技巧属于年轻女性的时候。忏悔坦白就是诉说倾诉，然而传统观念认为付诸行动才见真心；Jordan二者兼有，既描绘出生动的图像，又以恳切的言语为其作注。在“Automate”低沉的鼓点和失真的朦胧之中，我们能想象出她正身处一个聚会上，忐忑不安，笨拙地摸索着亲吻一个陌生人，假装那是随便一个路人。“I’ll never find another love like this,”她感叹道，这也是她音乐中反复出现的情绪。在“Mia”中，她带着我们走在百老汇大街上，在去往她新友人的公寓途中目睹一位前任在那里秀恩爱。“Lost love so strange,”Jordan沐浴在管弦乐的旋律用颤抖的言语说道，这种体验在她扣人心弦的声音中尤为深刻，紧绷、令人哽咽。

Some of Valentine’s best moments come when Jordan’s textures are as bold as her emotions. “Ben Franklin” is an infectious highlight; come for the sturdy bass groove and the delicious irony of “Got money/I don’t care about sex” in the verse; stay for Jordan’s bratty delivery of “huh, honey?,” her melody doubled by wiggling synth and backed up with guest vocals from Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on the chorus. The slinky “Forever (Sailing)” brings trip-hop atmospherics to a tale of betrayal, borrowing its chorus from a 1979 song by the Swedish pop singer Madleen Kane. “Doesn’t obsession just become me?” Jordan sings knowingly here, handing down her thesis statement.

当Jordan歌声的纹理同她的情感一样大胆时，《Valentine》中最美好的高光时刻就出现了。“Ben Franklin”便是一个极具感染力的亮点：来听结实的贝斯低奏和副歌中“Got money/I don’t care about sex”的俏皮讽刺；听Jordan对“huh, honey?”的古灵阐述，她的旋律在扭动的合成器下效果加倍，并在副歌中得到Waxahatchee的Katie Crutchfield的客唱支持。悠扬的 “Forever(Sailing)”借鉴了瑞典流行歌手Madleen Kane1979年的一首歌曲，为这个关于背叛的故事带来了短途旅行的浪漫气氛。“Doesn’t obsession just become me?”乔丹在这里明知故问道，像是在做论文答辩。

Obsession has its upsides; resist its pull and you’ll miss delirious highs. “Light Blue,” a cozy daydream of close-mic’d acoustic guitar and glowing strings that stands apart as Valentine’s only unburdened love song, contains this tingling admission of affection: “I wanna wake up early every day/Just to be awake in the same world as you.” Though something of an outlier in both its simplicity and its sentiment, this song is a smart addition to the set—it demonstrates what’s at stake when Jordan sings about love that she’d die for.

痴迷有它的好处；而抗拒它的诱惑，你就会怀念那种谵妄的快感。“Light Blue”作为《Valentine》中唯一一首没有任何负担的情歌而独树一帜，由阻塞麦克风下的原声吉他和发光的弦乐组成，讲述着激动人心的爱的允诺：“I wanna wake up early every day/Just to be awake in the same worldas you.”虽然这首歌在其简单性和情感上都算是个异类，但它同时也是这张专辑所有歌曲的一个聪明的附注——它揭示了当Jordan唱到她愿意为之献身的爱情时的关键所在。

But obsession—whether you’re on the giving or receiving end—is also exhausting. On the same song, Jordan offers her partner a choice. “We can sail the ocean blue,” she sings, then gets real: “Or just lie down.” She shows a similar tendency toward rest in about half the songs on the album, most memorably on the delicate “c. et. al.”: “Even with a job that keeps me moving/Most days I just wanna lie down.” Jordan is hardly the first young star to write about the toll of her chosen path; Clairo, Jordan’s friend and an artist who is often spoken about in the same breath, did it on her own sophomore effort this year. But what’s exciting here is that fatigue has not muted Jordan or tamped her growth; instead of lying down, she shakes it off and keeps moving, chasing big sounds and big feelings. Even when she’s exhausted, Jordan is exuberant.

但是迷恋——无论你是给予还是承纳的一端——都令人身心俱疲。在同一首歌中，Jordan为她的伴侣提供了一个选择。“We can sail the ocean blue,”她唱道，然后回归现实：“Or just lie down.”她在专辑中近半数的歌曲中表现出类似的躺平倾向，其中最令人难忘的是在细腻的 “c.et. al.”： “Even with a job that keeps me moving/Most days I just wanna lie down.”Jordan不是第一个写下她所选择道路代价的年轻一代明星；Jordan的朋友同时也是一个常被人们提及艺术家Clairo，在她自己今年的第二张录音室专辑中也写到类似感受。但这里令人振奋的是，疲惫并没有使Jordan凝噎，也没有阻碍她的成长；她没有选择躺平，而是甩开它，继续前行，追逐更为宏伟的声音和更缤纷的人生体验。即使在她筋疲力尽的时候，Jordan也能闪充满电来应对。