【搬运译】Pitchfork评Snail Mail 2018年专辑《Lush》

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：Ryan-Chopin

审校：WhitneyL

Snail Mail’s striking debut album is emotionally wise, musically clear, and encompasses the once and future sound of indie rock.

Snail Mail这张炫目多彩的处女专辑情感表达得体，音乐清晰，囊括了独立摇滚过往及未来之音。

Sincerity is Lindsey Jordan’s superpower. The moody guitar confessionals she creates as Snail Mail contend with suburban teenage ennui—the angst of feeling like you’re the only person who’s truly alive in a dulled world. But unlike so many other disillusioned 18-year-olds with a Fender and a microphone, Jordan does not whine or wallow; she transcends. She articulates the self-conscious shame of youth with a startling clarity, but she also knows that these things too will pass. Her sorrowful pleas—of disAppointment, of confusion, of unrequited queer love—often turn into triumphs upon hitting open air. When she claims “I’ll never love anyone else” on her debut album, Lush, she is not moping—she sounds psyched, turning the sad sentiment into a singalong, as a rush of bass, drums, and jangling chords raise her up high.

真诚便是Lindsey Jordan的超能力。她用艺名Snail Mail创作的这张忧郁的吉他忏悔录讲述了郊区青少年的无聊生活——那种焦虑让人感觉自己独自苟活在这个沉闷的世界上。但她不像许多对芬达吉他和麦克风的幻想已破灭的18岁少年，Jordan冷眼观物，轻动刚肠，她已经超越了自我。她仔细描述着年轻人的羞耻感，但她也知道这些感觉都会消逝。她那悲伤的辩词，充满失望、困惑和奇异的单相思恋情，而当她到户外散心时，这一切都像是由忧变喜。她在首张专辑《Lush》中宣称“我永远不会爱上任何人”时，她并没听起来很忧郁，而是很激动，把悲伤的情绪变成了音乐，一阵阵低音、鼓声和刺耳的和弦把情绪推向高潮。

With Lush, Jordan earns her place as a leader in the next generation of indie rock, the ones who are keeping the genre’s honorable ideals alight while continuing to expand its purview beyond straight white dudes. She was born in June 1999, the same month Napster started, and by the time she was in her early teens, the once-sturdy walls that separated mainstream and underground music were all but rubble. So while Jordan is indebted to the ethos of ’90s indie rock, she bends it to her will and her moment. There are echoes of early Liz Phair in Lush’s stark guitars and its tightrope walk between despair and enlightenment, but there are also flashes of the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg at his most wrung-out, and Paramore’s Hayley Williams crinkled emo soulfulness, and Fiona Apple’s ferocity, and Taylor Swift’s savvy heartache, and the solemn quietude of Frank Ocean’s Blonde. Jordan doesn’t make a big show of her eclecticism on the album—on its face, it is a collection of slow and mid-tempo guitar rock songs—but there are details that separate it from the tried-and-true indie of yesteryear, that make it feel born into her era.

凭借《Lush》这张专辑，Jordan使自己在下一代独立摇滚领域赢得领军席位，这些领军人物在继续拓展着自己的视野，在超白人音乐同胞的基础上，也保持了该流派崇高的理想。她出生于1999年6月，当时纳普斯特音乐公司成立刚成立，当她十几岁的时候，主流音乐和地下音乐隔开的高墙也已崩塌。因此，虽然Jordan受到90年代独立摇滚精神的正面影响，但这也不阻碍她将其转变为自己的意志和光辉时刻。我们能在《Lush》专辑中听到鲜明的吉他声，仿佛让人游走在绝望与启蒙运动之中，风格类似早期的Liz Phair,也能隐约看到the Replacements乐队成员Paul Westerberg的光芒,还有Paramore乐队的Hayley Williams邹着眉头但情绪饱满的影子，我们还能感受到Fiona Apple的激昂、Taylor Swift笔下的痛彻心扉,和Frank Ocean的专辑《Blonde》中庄严而肃穆的寂静。Jordan并没有在专辑里大肆展示她的折衷主义思想，从表面上看，这是一张充满慢速和中速吉他摇滚歌曲的合集，但一些细节足以将这张专辑与她去年发行的那首久经考验的独立歌曲区分开来，让人觉得这张专辑就归属于她的时代。

For one, Lush lives up to its name; “I never wanted to make a lo-fi record,” Jordan recently said. All 10 songs go down clean, every note is heard, every part delivered with both verve and poise. As a classically trained guitarist who began playing at age 5, Jordan colors many tracks with layers of pleasingly sour chords kissed by reverb, her clean tone in concert with her emotional transparency. Her guitar work helps Lush achieve a sidewinding spell that invites obsessive listening. It also opens up plenty of space for her bandmates to add unfussy accompaniment and, most importantly, for her voice to ring out unencumbered. Whereas her vocals were buried on 2016’s Habit EP, they are gloriously exposed on Lush, and we really hear Lindsey Jordan for the first time.

首先，《Lush》这张专辑名副其实，“我从来没有想过要录制低保真唱片，”Jordan说。所有的10首歌都很干净利落，每个音符都清晰入耳，各个部分的递进也富有神韵与沉稳。作为一名训练有素的吉他手，她5岁开始演奏，Jordan在混响后用令人愉快的多层次和弦为许多曲目润色，干净的声线与丰富的情感相辅相成。她的吉他作品使《Lush》间接施展了一种法术，使人们为其痴迷。这也为她的乐队成员提供了足够的空间来添加合适的伴奏，最重要的是，她得以在专辑中一展歌喉。2016年发行的EP《Habit》中她的声音尽管未大放异彩，但在《Lush》中却有着完美的呈现，这倒真像是我们第一次听到Lindsey Jordan的妙音。

As a singer, she embodies the chaotic changes that teenagers quickly cycle through in a given month, day, minute. She is bored. She is defeated. She is bratty. She is jubilant. She is blunt. She is elliptical. These shifts occur from song to song, but also from line to line, or even word to word. On “Pristine,” she reels off lines of devoted romantic poetry before immediately dismissing them with a tossed-off “anyways,” pumping up and deflating her own crush in a single breath. Throughout the record, each line is given its own story. Every vocal feels deeply considered and felt, yet nothing is over-rehearsed. She knows precisely when to dial in and when to dial back, when to fully commit to her longing and when to step back and shake her head at it.

作为一名歌手，她完美地在其音乐中展现出青少年在特定时间（如一个月、一天或一分钟）内经历的复杂而迅速的变化。音乐中充斥着她的百无聊赖，刻画着她的失败、愤懑、满心欢喜、直言不讳，也展现了她歌词中的隐晦与深刻。从一首到另一首，从一行到另一行，甚至从一个词到另一个词，都在瞬息万变之中。在“Pristine”中，她一口气填充了几行浪漫的诗句，然后马上接了句“不管怎么”把这些诗词抛之脑后，一紧一松，她那喜好之物被她玩弄于鼓掌。在整个唱片中，每一行都有独特的自身经历。她的每一次发声都经过深思熟虑并带有真情实感，且没有过度打磨。她清楚知道什么时候该放手，什么时候该收手，什么时候该全身心地表达自己的欲望，什么时候该摇头后退，拒之门外。

There’s a ragged grit to Jordan’s voice, and she can make it growl or tame it into a rasping lilt in order to make her point. “Heat Wave” begins warily, with Jordan pining in yesterday’s clothes, her voice a groggy croak. As the song picks up pace, it sounds like she’s gaining confidence with each verse as she considers a particular flagging relationship. Finally, after an invigorating guitar spasm, she snaps out of her funk, sets her feet square on the ground, and lets it rip: “I’m not into sometimes,” she decides, her throat full, her delivery resolute. The song is an entire Greta Gerwig coming-of-age film in about five minutes.

Jordan的声音里有一种不成熟的勇气，在这基础上，她可以咆哮，也可以变得温顺，奏成悦耳的轻快节奏，以便表露情感。“Heat Wave”小心翼翼地开始了，Jordan蜷缩在昨天没换的大衣里，她的声音低沉而迷醉。这首歌的节奏逐渐加快，感觉像是她对每一段歌词都越来越有信心，而她也在音乐中表现出了对那段心累的感情的踌躇。最后，在一阵令人振奋的吉他演奏之后，她仿佛猛地从恐惧中恢复过来，双脚紧贴地面，撕心裂肺道：“我有时就是受不了”，她这样宣泄到，像是有说不完的话，声音异常坚定。这首歌简直堪比演员Greta Gerwig五分钟演绎完的成长电影。

Several of the most disarming moments on Lush come in the form of a question: “Do you love me?” “Don’t you like me for me?” “Who’s your type of girl?” “What could ever be enough?” “Did things work out for you?” These are intimate Appeals, the kind that often come with watery eyes and trembling chins. But when Jordan sings them, it’s as if she’s staring directly at the person in question, commanding in her vulnerability. This attitude defines Lush, and Jordan turns it into a mantra on “Full Control.” The song finds her moving past the bullshit of another failed romance, done with waiting for someone to love her back. The strident verses coalesce into the album’s most cleansing hook: “I’m in full control/I’m not lost,” she attests, her voice soaring. “Even when it’s love/Even when it’s not.” Lindsey Jordan does not have all the answers. But, in music and life, she knows what she wants, and she’s unafraid to ask for more.

《Lush》中几个最让人轻松舒畅的时刻都是以一个问题的形式出现的:“你爱我吗?”“难道你就不喜欢我吗?”“你喜欢什么样的女孩?”“什么才算够呢?”“一切顺利吗?”这些呼喊都很亲密，随之而来的便是纵横的眼泪和颤抖的双唇。但Jordan唱出来的时候，感觉好像她在直勾勾盯着那个人，并用她的娇弱让其折服。这种态度奠定了《Lush》的基调，而Jordan更是将其变成了歌曲“Full Control”里的咒语。在这首歌中，她不再纠结于失败的罗曼史，而是等待着下一个爱她的人出现。悦耳的话语凑成专辑中最干净利落的一句词:“我完全控制住了/我没有迷失，”她这样证明到，声音格外高昂。“即使那是爱/即使那不是爱。”Lindsey Jordan并不知道所有问题的答案。但是，在音乐和生活中，她知道自己心之所向，也无畏前路坎坷。