【搬运译】叉婊Pitchfork评Deerhunter 2010年专辑《Halcyon Digest》

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

Deerhunter make a record about the joy of early music discovery, and in revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, they brilliantly rekindle it.

Deerhunter制作了一张关于年少时从音乐中寻觅欢愉的唱片，在重温年少时光时，他们出色地用音乐重燃了这种属于青春的热情。

Halcyon Digest is a record about the joy of music discovery, the thrill of listening for the first time to a potential future favorite, and that sense of boundless possibility when you're still innocent of indie-mainstream politics and your personal canon is far from set. In revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, Deerhunter brilliantly rekindle it, and the result meets Microcastle/Weird Era (Cont.) as the band's most exhilarating work to date. Whether those halcyon days were real or just idealized doesn't matter. With producer Ben Allen, who lent a bass-heavy sheen to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, these four guys-- lead singer Bradford Cox, singer/guitarist Lockett Pundt, bass player Josh Fauver, and drummer Moses Archuleta-- have created a seamless album of startling emotional clarity.

《Halcyon Digest》是一张关于年少时从音乐中寻觅欢愉的唱片，描绘的是人们第一次聆听在不久的将来会付诸热爱的音乐时的激动情绪；是对当你对独立音乐尚一知半解，音乐的舒适圈尚未定型时那种无限可能的追忆。在重温那段年少时光时，Deerhunter出色地重燃起其中焰火，最终是与《Microcastle》《Weird Era Cont.》的碰撞，成为乐队迄今为止最振奋人心的作品。而那些光辉往日存在于真实世界还是理想世界也似乎不再重要。制作人Ben Allen曾赋予Animal Collective的《Merriweather Post Pavilion》以厚重的低音光泽；而乐队四人——主唱Bradford Cox、人声/吉他手Lockett Pundt、贝斯手Josh Fauver和鼓手Moses Archuleta——共同创造了一张情感表达清晰无比、堪称无瑕的专辑。

Deerhunter have never lacked ambition. 2007 breakout Cryptograms came as two discrete halves: one front-loaded with ambient drifts and clanging post-punk aggression, the other blasting off into sunny psych-pop. Microcastle turned out to be a sprawling, ghostly amusement park of a double album, with violence and frail beauty never far from each other. And then there are all those EPs, side projects, and rarities. In blog posts and interviews, Cox has shown himself to be a music lover of the highest order, almost a platonic ideal of the artist as fan.

Deerhunter从不缺乏野心。2007年的突破性作品《Cryptograms》拥有两个独立特质：一个是表层的氛围漂移假象以及其背后的铿锵、侵略性十足的后朋，另一个是爆炸性突变而成的阳光迷幻流行。到了《Microcastle》则变成了一张庞大的、幽灵般的双专辑主题游乐园，暴力之美同脆弱之美相互交融、难舍难分。随后还有所有这些EP、“副产品”和“稀有产品”我们都可以从中略窥端倪。在几篇博客文章和采访文稿中，Cox已经略微透露出他是一个顶级音乐爱好者，几乎是艺术家们的柏拉图式的理想粉丝。

This record marks a distinctly different approach for the band, more streamlined and stripped down, and in its sparest moments, it echoes the stark intimacy and one-take effortlessness of records like Neil Young's Tonight's the Night or Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos. Fans of the band's earlier stuff may understandably miss some of the old electric-guitar squall, but Halcyon Digest's expanded instrumental palette-- acoustic guitar, electronic percussion, banjo, autoharp, harmonica, vocal harmonies, and saxophone (!)-- creates endless depths of intricacy and nuance to explore in headphones.

这张唱片标志着乐队走上一条截然不同的道路，变得愈加精练、脱胎换骨；在最平静的间隙，它呼应着Neil Young的《Tonight's the Night》或Chris Bell的《I Am the Cosmos》等唱片中的那种鲜明的亲昵相依和一蹴而就的风格。钟爱乐队早期作品的粉丝可能会怀念那些老式电吉他的声音，但《Halcyon Digest》无疑扩展了乐队器乐的调色板——原声吉他、电子打击乐、班卓琴、自鸣琴、口琴、人声和声以及萨克斯管(!)——在耳机中创造了无限精妙繁密的细节。

In the past, Deerhunter's gift for garbled sonics and Cox's stream-of-consciousness methods made it easy to downplay the group's lyrical ability. That's not the case here. Whether by Pundt, who sings lead on two of Halcyon Digest's best songs, or Cox, Deerhunter's songwriting congeals into a style all its own, with lyrics moved front-and-center. The words fit perfectly together, down to the most trivial minutia: Cox asking, "Did you stick with me?" at the start of garage-pop fist-pumper "Memory Boy", right after the track people are most likely to skip (funny!), or Pundt mentioning a "marching band" on another uptempo proto-anthem, "Fountain Stairs", as Bill Oglesby's sax first appears.

过去，Deerhunter对声波的失真处理天赋和Cox的意识流表达方式使得人们很容易忽视这个团体的抒情能力。但如今的情况已大不相同，无论是由Pundt（他在《Halcyon Digest》最好的两首歌曲中担任主唱）还是Cox，Deerhunter的词曲创作都凝结成一种自己的独特风格。歌词被置于首要且核心的位置，这些词完美地结合在一起，刻画着一些最微不足道的细节：Cox在车库流行曲“Memory Boy”的开头问道“Did you stick with me?”就在人们最可能忽略的曲目之后（有趣！）；或是Pundt在另一首快节奏的前奏曲“Fountain Stairs”中提到的“marching band”，也是在这，Bill Oglesby的萨克斯第一次出现在他们的音乐中。

The topical ground covered here is inspired, too: "Revival", a sort of Southern gothic folk-rock baptism, embraces religion. "I'm saved, I'm saved!" Cox exalts, "I felt his presence heal me." Recorded to four-track, "Basement Scene" "dream[s] a little dream" that soon turns nightmarish: "I don't wanna get old" quickly becomes "I wanna get old" as Cox weighs the alternative. And first single "Helicopter" is a beautifully watery electro-acoustic farewell that uses a tragic Dennis Cooper story about a Russian prostitute (graciously reprinted in the liner notes) to support its emotional bleakness.

专辑里歌曲涵盖的主题也很有灵气：“Revival”，像受到一种南哥特式民谣摇滚的洗礼，拥抱宗教。“I'm saved, I'm saved!” Cox得意地慨叹道，“I felt his presence heal me.”；在“Basement Scene”中，最初的“梦，再小梦片刻”的流连忘返，很快变作噩梦：在权衡多种抉择后，Cox心中所想自“I don't wanna get old”很快演变成“I wanna get old”。专辑的第一首单曲“Helicopter”是一个悠扬的水声电波告别曲，引用了Dennis Cooper笔下一个关于俄罗斯妓女的悲惨故事（唱片内页附赠有这篇故事），借以支撑词曲所要传达的阴郁、黯淡。

Then there's seven-and-a-half-minute finale "He Would Have Laughed", dedicated to Jay Reatard, the Memphis garage rocker who died last winter of drug-related causes at age 29. Its lyrics are the most cryptic on Halcyon Digest-- full sentences are rarely formed before Cox closes them off with his usual crisp consonants. A simple acoustic guitar riff repeats as other percussion elements and electronic tones pan across the track, occasionally joined by the full band. Cox admits to growing "bored as I get older," and then goes into a dream-- "I lived on a farm, yeah/ I never lived on a farm"-- until he finally all but asks, "Where are your friends tonight?" The track cuts off unexpectedly mid-note.

然后是长达七分半的压轴曲“He Would Have Laughed”，献给去年冬天死于毒品相关原因的孟菲斯车库摇滚歌手Jay Reatard，享年仅29岁。它的歌词是《Halcyon Digest》所有歌曲中最隐晦的——在Cox用他一贯的清脆辅音结束之前，都没有几个完整的句子。一个简易的原声吉他riff重复着，打击乐和电子音效等等其他元素在这首曲子中接连泛起，偶有整个乐队一齐发声。Cox坦诚着“bored as I get older”，随后遁入梦境——“I lived on a farm, yeah/ I never lived on a farm”——直到他最后几乎质问道：“Where are your friends tonight?”“Where do they see you?”“What did you want to be?”便意外地在音符间隙中断了。

Deerhunter unveiled their new album by asking fans to print out a vintage DIY-style poster, photocopy it, and tape it up all over town. In the last couple of weeks, band members have participated in all-night online chats with some of their most devoted fans. We'll never be able to parse every lyric or tease out every technical intricacy-- though somebody will probably try-- but that is what Halcyon Digest is all about: nostalgia not for an era, not for antiquated technology, but for a feeling of excitement, of connection, of that dumb obsession that makes life worth living no matter how horrible it gets. And then sharing that feeling with somebody else who'll start the cycle all over again.

Deerhunter要求歌迷们打印这张复古DIY风格的海报，复印数张、贴满全城的大街小巷来，以此揭开他们新专辑的面纱。在过去的几周里，乐队成员们参与了同他们最忠实的歌迷的通宵在线聊天。我们永远无法解析每一句歌词，也无法找出每一个复杂技术问题的标准答案——尽管可能有人会尝试——但这就是《Halcyon Digest》的全部内容：不是对一个时代、一个过时技艺的怀旧，而是对一种悸动、一种联结的感觉，一种无论生活会变得多么可怕也值得奔赴的愚蠢的痴迷。然后与其他人分享这种感觉，他们将重启这一循环。