【搬运译】叉婊Pitchfork评Indigo De Souza 2021年专辑Any Shape You Take
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：Beans_Beans
The North Carolina songwriter’s outstanding second album spans grungy rock and colorful, hi-fi pop, illuminating her impressive voice and her ability to wring out every last drop of emotion.
这位来自北卡罗来纳州的作曲家的第二张专辑表现出色，专辑横跨颓废摇滚和色彩绚丽的高保真流行乐，向世人展示了她令人印象深刻的声线和她深掘每一缕情感的能力。
Some nights you go out, and along with theusual sky-high Uber receipt, return home with an iridescent, forever-memory.How beautiful your friends look under the soft gel lighting, cocking theirheads back and grinning lazily; how liberating it is to whirl with themdrunkenly as the DJ plays another song. In the right company, you don’t have tosay much to be understood, yet there’s a kind of tacit oath: that you’ve knowneach other then and now, and you will care for the successive versions of eachother that follow.
总有几个夜晚，你独自出门，等再次归家时口袋揣着天价Uber账单，心怀着彩虹般梦幻、难以消散的甜美回忆。在柔和的灯光下，你的朋友们懒散地仰着头，洋溢着笑容，那一幕是多么美好；DJ切到下一首歌，醉醺醺的你又伴着音乐同他们一起旋转摇摆，这又何尝不是一种自在。和对的人一道，你无须多言来寻得他的理解，这是一种心照不宣的誓言：你们已然了解彼此的过去和当下；你们同样会心系彼此未来的篇章。
This sublime, uncomplicated devotionilluminates “Hold U,” by the 24-year-old Saddle Creek artist Indigo De Souza.Its music video celebrates the communal warmth of a queer party; friends brusheyeshadow onto De Souza’s lids and tangle together on the couch before gettingglittered up on the dancefloor. “You are a good thing, I’ve noticed,” shemurmurs to them—and soon a stylish, tapered groove kicks in to warm up themood, becoming even more triumphant with the addition of clapping percussionand stratospheric wooos. De Souza’s language is minimal, but she imbues herwords with such ardent sincerity that even the most elemental ideas areelectrifying. With just one line, she seems to promise everything: “I will holdyou.”
这位24岁的Saddle Creek签约艺术家Indigo De Souza的歌曲“Hold U”就体现了这种崇高而纯粹的热爱精神。它的MV歌颂的是酷儿派对中充斥着的集体温暖；友人为De Souza绘上眼影、在沙发上缠绵依偎、然后来到舞池闪闪发光、耀眼夺目。她低声对他们倾诉着：“You are a good thing, I've noticed。”——紧接着，一段时髦、愈加精细的节奏出现，再加上背景中的拍手声和和声，气氛愈加宜人得意。De Souza的语言尤为简洁，但却灌满了一种炽热的诚挚，甚至最基本的想法在这里都令人兴奋不已。她似乎只用一句话——“I'LL HOlD U”——就承诺了一切。
“Hold U” is a highlight of De Souza’ssecond album, Any Shape You Take, which traces a loose narrative down a rockypath towards self-discovery. Following her charming indie rock debut, 2018’s ILove My Mom, De Souza finally left a long-term relationship that she’sdescribed as like “be[ing] buried and lost in my own body.” And so the songs onAny Shape You Take, written over the course of many years, are about wretched,ravenous kinds of love, love that alerts you to your own mortality. But they’realso about finding compassion for yourself and your loved ones. Musically, therecord refines the roaming fluidity De Souza displayed in her early EPs andsingles, where she flirted with smoky jazz crooning, Sylvan Esso folktronica,and even rapping. Co-produced with Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee), itseamlessly integrates grungy rock and colorful, hi-fi pop elements, with sparelyrics enlivened by her immaculate sense of melody.
“Hold U”毫无疑问是De Souza第二张录音室专辑《Any Shape You Take》的一大亮点。这张专辑沿着一条崎岖不平的自我认同之路而展开，为我们缓缓道来一段段松散的叙事。2018年，在她迷人的独立摇滚处女作《I Love My Mom》发行之后，De Souza终于结束了一段她形容为“埋葬和迷失在自己肉体之中”的长期恋情。也因此《Any Shape You Take》——这张关于卑微而贪婪的爱情，最终让你自觉已迎来爱情坟墓的专辑——筹备了很多年，至今才问世。但这些曲目也在为她寻觅着同情自己或自身所爱的人。从音乐性上来说，这张唱片完善了De Souza在早期EP和单曲中就显现出的流畅性，在这些单曲中，她融入了烟雾爵士乐的低吟、Sylvan Esso的民谣形式，甚至说唱元素。在Brad Cook（曾与Bon Iver, Waxahatchee合作）的合作制作下，《Any Shape You Take》无缝融合了垃圾摇滚和色彩绚丽的高保真流行乐元素，简洁有力的歌词在她近乎完美的律动感的带动下而活跃起来。
In De Souza’s presence, bare-bones remarkstake on tremendous feeling—and the magic is in how her tactile voice kicksthrough the skin of every line she sings. She can manipulate it into a woundedtremble like Angel Olsen and scratchy, ringing yelps; she rivals Frances Quinlanof the band Hop Along with her vocal agility. Reliving a sleepless night on thesqualling “Bad Dream,” she tosses from tormented pop-punk howl (“I’m AL-LREA-DY GO-NE”) to flat intonation (“Please. Send. Help. To me”), eventuallysoaring into a keening, operatic falsetto (“I’m having a hard timesl-EEEE-ping.”) Unconcerned with places and names, she drills into simplephrases until they’re all-consuming. A haunting, unresolved question hangs over“Darker Than Death”: “Was it something I said?” At the end of “Way Out,” sherepeats “I wanna be a light” for almost a full minute—at first with breezyself-assurance, then with ragged breath that hints at desperation.
De Souza的出现，证明简洁的印记也可以带来了巨量惊人的体验——而神奇之处就在于她可感的嗓音能够贯穿她每一行歌词的表里。可以操纵它，让它同Angel Olsen那样受伤地战栗，发出刺耳的尖啸；她灵活的嗓音可与Hop Along乐队的Frances Quinlan相媲美。在充斥着怖人尖啸的“Bad Dream”中，她经历了一个不眠之夜，从痛苦的流行朋克式嚎叫（“I'm having a hard time sl-EEEE-ping.”）到平淡的语调（“Please. Send. Help. To me”），最终变成了悲恸的歌剧式咏叹（“I'm having a hard time sl-EEEE-ping.”）。她对是谁、又身在何处漠不关心，而是锤炼那些简洁的短句，直到把它们全部潜能释放出来。“Darker Than Death”中有着一个挥之不去却仍悬而未决的问题：“Was it something I said?”；在“Way Out”的尾声，她用了将近一分钟的时间重复着“I wanna be a light”——即便一开始轻松自信，随后呼吸却渐渐急促，暗示了内心的绝望。
Because her voice is so naturallyarresting, it’s unexpected to hear her warp it with Auto-Tune and vocoder onthe synth-pop opener “17.” Its saccharine production recreates a kind ofguilelessness, as she casts her gaze at a lover from adolescence. “Darling…won’t you just bend?” she asks sweetly, before her voice seizes into somethinguncannily pinched and chirpy: “This is the way I’m going to bend.” It’s a bitof a red herring; nothing else on the album sounds like it again. From there,Any Shape You Take embraces unpredictability in its sound and sequencing:self-destruction (“Kill Me”) shadows life-affirming catharsis (“Hold U”) andplacid wisdom (“Pretty Pictures”) follows obsessive thinking (“Die/Cry”).Midway through the centerpiece “Real Pain,” which opens with a clear-headedmeditation on the inescapability of grief, the song climaxes in a din ofcrowdsourced screams. It’s overwhelmed by heavy-metal shrieks, barks like arabid dog, and what sounds like someone exasperatedly repeating “fuck, fuck,fuck”—until it suddenly zips back up to crisp indie pop.
因为她本身的嗓音便自然而然地吸引着人，所以在合成器流行乐开场曲“17”中听到她用Auto-Tune和声码器扭曲她的人声是尤为出人意料的。它精密甜美的制作再现了这种真诚。当她凝视着青春期的初恋，她甜甜地问道：“Darling… won't you just bend?”，随即她的声音再次变得异常的收紧和欢快：“This is the way I'm going to bend.”但这也仅是一种转移注意力的小把戏；从这以后，《Any Shape You Take》便没有这样的声音，其中的音色和曲序都充斥着不可预测性：自我毁灭（“Kill Me”）的阴影维系着积极生活的宣泄净化（“Hold U”）；平静的智慧（“Pretty Pictures”）伴随着偏执的思考囚笼（“Die/Cry”）。在核心曲目“Real Pain”中，开场是对避之不及的悲伤的清醒思考，但歌曲却是在此起彼伏的尖叫中达到高潮——它充斥着重金属的尖叫元素，像疯狗一样，听起来像有人在愤怒地重复“Fa(u)ck! Fa(u)ck! Fa(u)ck”——直到它突然又回到了冷静清醒的独立流行乐。
Is there a more honest and real response tohurt than screaming? Doesn’t it feel good to just let yourself cry? It can seemeasier to stay guarded and cool, to furiously maintain control by trying toout-analyze your emotions. But it’s impossible to outrun them. On Any Shape YouTake, De Souza commits herself to being undone, to experiencing the terriblefeelings and the beautiful ones. Even when she’s fucked-up, there is somethingecstatic in her attempts at loving, her hunger to absorb all she can from life.
当一个人受伤时，还有比尖叫更真挚、真实的反应吗？让自己哭出来不也是一件好事吗？保持警惕和冷静似乎更容易——通过试图分析自己的情绪来看似理智地压抑克制。但要想真正克服它们是不可能的，在《Any Shape You Take》中，De Souza坦诚地接受自己要被情绪摧毁，去承纳这些糟糕的感觉和体验那些美好的感觉。即便她搞砸了，但在她对爱的一次次试错中也能够收获一种狂喜。她渴望从生活的每一个角落汲取一切。
