搬運自：微信公眾號【評論搬一堆】（在原文基礎上添加了英語原文與排版調(diào)整）?

翻譯：Lynn Liu

校正：WhitneyL

The man who took us to church tries to take us to the same church, again, 14 times, six years later.

這個曾帶我們前往教堂的男人，6年后，也就是現(xiàn)在，想再次帶我們?nèi)ネ瑯拥慕烫?，這回是14次。

Like a desperate magician guessing card after card until he arrives at the one in your hand, Andrew Hozier-Byrne spends much of his second album stumbling through a simple trick. To kick off his first full-length in five years, the platinum-selling Irish singer-songwriter celebrates the legends who spoke truth to power, as he shouts out a veritable VH1 marathon’s worth of greats: Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, John Lennon, James Brown, Joni Mitchell, Mavis Staples, Patti Smith, Marvin Gaye, and more are name-checked during the opening song “Nina Cried Power.” The message is simple. All of these people made a difference, and, whoever you are, wherever you are, at least?one?of them probably means something to you. Why dwell in hopelessness when you can join the choir?

就像一位絕望的魔術(shù)師一樣，一遍又一遍地猜著你手中的撲克牌，直到猜中為止。Andrew Hozier-Byrne在他的第二張專輯中費了很大力氣才展現(xiàn)了一個簡單的小把戲。五年前他第一張專輯發(fā)行的時候，這位銷量過百萬的愛爾蘭唱作歌手歌頌了那些敢于在權(quán)力面前訴說真相的傳奇歌手，由此，他喊話到，VH1馬拉松真正的價值就在于這些偉人：Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, John Lennon, James Brown, Joni Mitchell, Mavis Staples, Patti Smith, Marvin Gaye,還有許多名字在專輯首單“Nina?Cried?Power”中出現(xiàn)。它所傳達的信息很簡單。這些人產(chǎn)生了巨大的影響，無論你是誰，無論你身處何地，他們中至少有一個人可能對你很重要。當你跟著輕聲哼唱的時候，為什么還要活在絕望之中呢？

It’s a well-meaning call to action that’s paid dividends in the past. “Take Me to Church” is both the title of Hozier’s career-making 2013 single and also his imagined purpose as a songwriter—a purveyor of good will, packaged in radio anthems designed to be sung at the top of your lungs. In his music and interviews, the soft-spoken 28-year-old is passionate about noble causes, from LGBTQ awareness to the Irish nurses’ strike and the opioid crisis. Standing at six-foot-five, with chiseled features and the occasional man-bun, the mononymic singer even has a kind of Christ-like aura, or at least downmarket Russell Brand. His mother, the visual artist Raine Hozier-Byrne, designed his latest album cover in a process that involved submerging her son underwater for extended periods of time: “I had said to mum,” he?joked?dryly, “Just try to think of the album sales if I do die on this shoot!”

這個善意的呼吁在以前就已經(jīng)得到了回應?！癟ake Me to Church”既是Hozier在2013年可稱作其事業(yè)里程碑單曲的標題，也是他想要成為唱作歌手的目標——?成為一名善意的傳播者，讓他的贊歌在收音機中流傳，縈繞于他人心頭歌唱。在他的音樂還有采訪中，這位溫柔的28歲歌手對他崇高的職業(yè)抱有熱情，從LGBT意識到愛爾蘭護士罷工，再到**類藥物危機。這位6.5英尺（約1.98米）高的歌手，輪廓分明，留著man-bun發(fā)型，這位留名的方式成名（譯者注：若外國某個名人以隱去姓只留名的方式成名（mononym），那么中文稱呼就變成對這個名字單獨的翻譯）的歌手甚至有一種像基督一樣的光環(huán)，或者至少像是低配版的Russell Brand（拉塞爾·布蘭德）。Hozier的母親是一位視覺藝術(shù)家，名為Raine Hozier-Byrne，她設計了Hozier的新專輯封面，在創(chuàng)作過程中，她讓Hozier長時間浸在水中，“我必須要和我母親說”他冷冷地開玩笑道：“如果我在拍攝（封面）的過程中不幸去世的話，就努力想想專輯銷量吧！”

Another thing: he’s got a gorgeous voice. Booming and effervescent, it’s an instrument that communicates passion, adventure, and wisdom, all to the extent that transcribing his lyrics seems to be somewhat missing the point. There’s a reason why most people didn’t realize that “Take Me to Church” is a protest song about the Catholic Church. Like Foster the People’s similarly out-of-nowhere smash “Pumped Up Kicks,” it seemed to ascend the charts solely on hummable hooks and crowd-pleasing adrenaline. Such strengths are a sweet but elusive currency. Analyze a beautiful day and it’s already over. At 14 tracks in roughly an hour,?Wasteland, Baby!?falls prey to the humdrum, all its power wrung dry.

另一件事：他擁有極好的嗓音——如此讓人興奮，如此受到歡迎，它是一種傳達激情、冒險和智慧的工具，在某種程度上，翻唱他的歌曲時似乎有些讓人拿捏不準輕重。這就是為什么大多數(shù)人并沒有意識到“Take?Me?to?Church”的是一首抗議天主教堂的歌。就像Foster the People無處不在的勁爆單曲“Pumped Up Kicks”一樣，它似乎僅僅憑借著簡單洗腦的旋律，讓聽眾腎上腺激素大增就輕松登上排行榜。這樣的力量既讓人感到幸福卻也同時讓人感到這是一種難以捉摸的流行。細細分析這美好的一天，它早已結(jié)束。《Wasteland, Baby!》的14首單曲的時長近1個小時，這張專輯已淪為單調(diào)的犧牲品，它的所有力量都干涸了。

The record’s pitfalls are nothing new for major-label artists attempting to follow a surprise hit. Nearly every element of “Take Me to Church” is isolated and recycled here in the hopes of crowning a successor: God is not in the house. The aid of a gospel choir doesn’t make the awkward one-word refrain of “To Noise Making (Sing)” sound like something worth singing along to, just as the slow-build, stomp-clap murk of “Movement” mostly invites you to avert eye contact from the back of the room. Even just the central refrains of these songs—Sing! Move!?Now!—suggest an unbecoming directness. Rock stars make us want to join in on the fun; wedding singers and youth group leaders demand it.

這張唱片的缺陷對于那些試圖追求驚喜的主流藝術(shù)家來說并不是什么新鮮事。幾乎“Take Me to Church”中的每一個元素都是獨立的，在這里被無限循環(huán)，以及為繼承者加冕：上帝不在這棟房子里。福音唱詩班的幫助并沒有使“To Noise Making (Sing)”里尷尬的單字副歌聽起來像更引人注目，就像在?“Movement”這首歌中緩慢的、跺腳-拍手聲的陰暗很可能會讓你將注意力轉(zhuǎn)移到別處。即使只是這些歌曲中的副歌——唱吧！動吧！就是現(xiàn)在！——暗示著一種不相稱的直接性。搖滾明星們想讓我們加入到其中的樂趣中；婚禮歌手和年輕樂隊主唱更強烈要求我們加入其中。

Hozier has always had a subtle dark streak, and you can sense him trying to wield his moods in new ways. He now deals in spacier arrangements, heavier guitars, and harsher lyrics. (“No Plan” takes aim at the “screaming, heaving fuckery of the world.”?Hoo-ah!) Most successful is a ballad called “Shrike” that also appeared on last year’s?Nina Cried Power?EP. It’s stark and fingerpicked, with gestures toward traditional Irish folk music. His bellowed vocals exude a down-home intimacy that makes me consider the strange path that led us toward pop music that sounds like this. It maybe begins with the Black Keys and Danger Mouse’s lite psychedelic blues and weaves through the Lumineers’ audience-participation folk-pop; it rides in the sidecar of Adele’s torch ballad supernovas and stops just short of Alabama Shakes’ riotous pearly gates. It wants badly to sound timeless but it already feels like a moment that’s passed. Ed Sheeran and James Bay, two of Hozier’s peers, have attempted to evolve by?writing fake Rihanna songs?and?cutting their hair, respectively. Hozier’s unease about the future is palpable.

Hozier的性格中總存在著一個敏感的黑暗面，你能感受到他試圖用新方式來操縱他的情緒。他現(xiàn)在沉溺于更有空間感的編曲，更深沉的吉他音，和更加尖銳的歌詞。[“No Plan”的目標是““screaming, heaving fuckery of the world.（高聲尖嘯著對世界的厭惡，咒罵著荒唐的世界（中文歌詞于網(wǎng)易云音樂））” Hoo-ah!”（啊哈?。最成功的當屬名為“Shrike”的抒情歌曲了，它也出現(xiàn)在去年的Nina Cried Power的迷你專輯上。這首歌的吉他指法直截了當，表現(xiàn)出了愛爾蘭傳統(tǒng)民間音樂的姿態(tài)。他咆哮的聲音散發(fā)出一種淳樸熱情的親密感，這讓我感到被引向了一條奇怪的道路，它竟然能夠把我們引向這樣的流行音樂。它可能以the Black Keys 和Danger Mouse的輕微迷幻藍調(diào)開始，穿梭于the Lumineers中與觀眾互動的民謠，基于Adele的超火抒情單曲，最后到達了Alabama Shakes樂隊狂歡的天堂之門。它急著想要達到永垂不朽的高度，可它卻同時也給人一種轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝的感受。與Hozier同時代的兩名歌手Ed Sheeran和?James Bay，前者曾嘗試過創(chuàng)作仿蕾哈娜的音樂，后者則剪去他的長發(fā)。Hozier對未來的不安是明顯的。

The way Hozier tells it, he wrote?Wasteland, Baby!’s title track after reading how threats of nuclear war caused the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move our doomsday clock ahead 30 seconds—an event that resulted in the BBC using the word “apocalypse” in a headline. And yet, he sees a little light. “All the fear and fire of the end of the world,” he sings gently, “Happens each time a boy falls in love with a girl.” He’s not the first songwriter to lament the small apocalypses that occur every day, or how love’s temporal nature is also what makes it special. And to hear him sing it—his voice coated in an unearthly burble atop humble, fingerpicked acoustic guitar—is to hear him acknowledge his limitations. After all, churches are where we celebrate life’s fiery beginnings and endings, but the truth is, we spend most of our time somewhere in the middle, consumed by an earnest and unglamorous everyday kind of searching. Without meaning or direction, it might, given a voice, sound something like this.

Hozier了解了由于核戰(zhàn)爭的威脅，《原子科學家公報》將世界末日來臨之時提前了30秒——這個事件讓BBC在標題上使用了“末日啟示”一詞，由此他創(chuàng)作了《Wasteland, Baby!》這張專輯。然而，他看到了一點希望?！癆ll the fear and fire of the end of the world（世界末日所有的恐懼和希望）”他輕唱到，“Happens each time a boy falls in love with a girl（每當男孩愛上一個女孩時都會發(fā)生）”。他并不是第一個為每天發(fā)生的小范圍"世界末日"而哀悼的唱作人，也不是第一個為愛的稍縱即逝而感到特別的人。當聽到他歌唱的時候——他的聲音為這質(zhì)樸的、指彈吉他音疊加上了一種神秘的空靈感。畢竟，教堂是我們慶祝生命中炙熱的起點和終點的地方，但事實卻是，我們大部分時間都花在中間的某個地方，被一種索然無味、日復一日的追逐所消耗。如果沒有任何意義或方向，它可能僅僅有其獨特聲線，但其音樂作品也僅在于此。