搬運(yùn)自：微信公眾號(hào)【評(píng)論搬一堆】（在原文基礎(chǔ)上添加了英語(yǔ)原文與排版調(diào)整）

翻譯：Nina Wang

審校：Ryan-Chopin

這群男孩對(duì)《OK Computer（好的，電腦）》（Radiohead的搖滾名專）的提問交出了千禧一代的答案……

Matty Healy always said the first three 1975 albums would tell a story: his own, from teen dreamer living in an affluent hinterland of Manchester (2013’s self-titled debut) to pop star in the first flushes of fame (2016’s ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’) and the Ziggy-ish conclusion to come.

過去Matty Healy總說(shuō)，The 1975的前三張專輯將會(huì)講述一個(gè)完整的故事：他自己的故事——年輕時(shí)夢(mèng)想著住進(jìn)曼切斯特的富人區(qū)（2013年同名處女專輯《The 1975》），成為流行歌手后初享成名的喜悅（2016年《I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It（喜歡安睡時(shí)的你因?yàn)槟悴恢阌卸嗝溃罚?strong>以及即將完成的自我總結(jié)。

Instead,?The 1975?took to the studio to produce not one but two albums, the first of which is ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relations’, with the second,?‘Notes On A Conditional Form’, to come next year. And this third album doesn’t just tell the story of Matty’s maturation as promised, it touches on modern politics, our relationship with technology and the entire Millennial experience, too. In doing so, it alights on bubblegum pop (‘TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME’), glitchy electronica (‘How To Draw / Petrichor’), balladry (‘Be My Mistake’), neo-jazz (‘Sincerity Is Scary’), trad jazz (‘Mine’) and all points in between.

然而這回，The 1975卻一次性做了兩張專輯，《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relations》和預(yù)計(jì)于明年發(fā)布的《Notes On A Conditional Form（有關(guān)條件式的小貼士）》。第三張專輯除了Matty所說(shuō)的成熟外，還涉及現(xiàn)代政治，人與技術(shù)的關(guān)系和千禧一代。這張專輯風(fēng)格多樣，包括泡泡糖流行樂（“TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME”）、噪音電子樂（“How To Draw / Petrichor（怎么畫／雨后泥土芬芳）”）、民謠（“Be My Mistake（我的錯(cuò)）”）、新爵士（“Sincerity Is Scary（真誠(chéng)令人害怕）”）和傳統(tǒng)爵士（“Mine（我的）”）等等。

If this is the continuing story of Matty Healy, things have either been going right on course or falling apart, depending on your preferred flavour of rock star. This is the album on which Matty’s self-destructive tendencies have taken hold, the cocaine psychosis of 2016’s ‘UGH!’ swapped for the rock clichés of?heroin addiction, rehab, therapy, windswept solitude in a Northants residential studio and sun-drenched isolation in LA.

如果說(shuō)這張專輯反映了Matty Healy的生活軌跡，那么說(shuō)他走上坡也好，走下坡也罷，總之取決于你喜歡什么類型的搖滾明星。Matty的自我毀滅傾向日趨明顯，從2016年關(guān)于可卡因性精神病的歌曲“UGH!”開始，到這張專輯中這類主題占了大部分：海洛因毒癮，戒毒，治療，在北安普敦郡居民區(qū)工作室里一個(gè)人面朝大海的生活，在洛杉磯的陽(yáng)光中感受寂寞。

It’s a rich run of life experience that informs the album in surprising ways, not least ‘It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’, a ‘Pretty In Pink’-style power-pop banger that sings dreamily about heroin as if it were a great lost love (“All I do is sit and think about you / If I knew what you’d do / Collapse my veins wearing beautiful shoes / It’s not living if it’s not with you”). It’s funny, clever and refreshingly honest,?and it’s not even the most confessional thing here – that would be a toss-up between ‘Be My Mistake’, a heart-wrenching, guilt-sodden song about on-tour loneliness and infidelity, or ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’, the massive closing track, which is so personal and intense it might just leave you in tears.

這張專輯凝結(jié)了豐富的人生經(jīng)歷，尤其是“It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)（這不叫生活（如果沒有你））”。這是一首強(qiáng)力流行樂，卻以紅粉佳人的朦朧姿態(tài)歌唱海洛因，飽含戀人離去的悲痛不已（“All I do is sit and think about you / If I knew what you’d do / Collapse my veins wearing beautiful shoes / It’s not living if it’s not with you（我終日坐著思念你／誰(shuí)曾想到你心狠手辣／我的血管敗在你腳下／沒你就不叫生活）”）。這首歌聰明有趣，有著令人耳目一新的真實(shí)，但在這張專輯里卻不是最誠(chéng)懇的，起碼還有“Be My Mistake”和“I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)（我總想離開這個(gè)世界（有時(shí)））”，前者講述了旅途中百般聊賴而出軌，由此引發(fā)的痛徹心扉和后悔莫及，后者作為專輯的最后一首歌，關(guān)乎個(gè)人傾訴，感情之強(qiáng)烈，讓你聽完后可能淚如雨下。

So on the one hand it is a personal album about Matty’s experience, but it’s also an album about love in all its forms (even for delicious opiates), love being the thread that links its genre-hopping tracks.?And there’s a macro scale to the album, too, one that holds a mirror up to society as well as to Matty’s pretty fizog. The towering ‘Love It If We Made It’ stands and points, aghast, at real-world horrors that have somehow been normalised, most jarringly “a beach of drowning three-year-olds” and the words of the President Of The United States Of America, repeated verbatim,?“I moved on her like a bitch“, casting no particular opinion and asking the listener to draw conclusions instead.

因而，這張專輯不僅講了Matty的個(gè)人經(jīng)歷，還關(guān)乎愛，一切的愛（甚至是對(duì)美味鴉片的愛）。愛貫穿專輯中所有流派的音樂。此外，這張專輯映射社會(huì)，“Love It If We Made It（如果成功，那就享受吧）”一曲劍指現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中被“正常化”的駭人慘狀。“a beach of drowning three-year-olds（海灘上三歲兒童溺水身亡）”令人悲痛，美國(guó)總統(tǒng)原話“I moved on her like a bitch（我像碧池一樣壓在她身上）”不斷重復(fù)。對(duì)這些問題Matty在歌中不做表態(tài)，希望可以引起聽者深思。

As the album’s intermission, ‘The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme’ is a poem narrated by Siri (yes, the one that lives in your pocket), a Vonnegut-like allegory about loneliness, data, social media and internet addiction, concerning a man, SnowflakeSmasher86, and his friend, The Internet. “When the man got sad, his friend had so many clever ways to make him feel better / He would get him cooked animals and show him the people having sex again / And he would always always agree with him,” it goes.

“The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme（愛上機(jī)器人的男人／愛情主題）”這首歌讓聽眾在聽到專輯中間時(shí)得以喘口氣，借用Siri（沒錯(cuò)，就是你口袋里的那個(gè)Siri）的聲線，講述了一個(gè)叫SnowflakeSmasher86的男人和他的朋友在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上的故事。歌曲充斥著孤獨(dú)、數(shù)據(jù)、社交媒體和網(wǎng)癮，活像一篇Vonnegut的諷刺小說(shuō)。其中唱道：“When the man got sad, his friend had so many clever ways to make him feel better / He would get him cooked animals and show him the people having sex again / And he would always always agree with him（當(dāng)他悲傷時(shí)，他的朋友總能變著花樣讓他笑／給他煮肉，給他看性愛視頻／他從不懷疑）”

It’s easy to see ‘The Man Who Married A Robot’ as the album’s ‘Fitter, Happier’, and it’s not the only moment in which ‘A Brief Inquiry’ begs comparison to Radiohead’s 1997 masterpiece ‘OK Computer’. That record, also the band’s third, took a gloomy view of modern life when the internet was a luxury few had access to. Two decades later, The 1975’s album, written from the perspective of four digital natives, doesn’t so much condemn the march of technology, information and social media so much as accept it and debate it. It’s a nuanced record for a time when life’s shades of grey are darker and closer in contrast than they may have previously been, and it’s no less powerful as a result.

我們不難看出，“The Man Who Married A Robot”就像“Fitter, Happier（更健康，更幸福）”，而且《A Brief Inquiry（快問快答）》與Radiohead 1997年的神作《OK Computer（好的，電腦）》的聯(lián)系也絕非僅此一處。在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)還是大眾難以企及的奢侈品之際，Radiohead樂隊(duì)的第三張專輯《OK Computer》便對(duì)現(xiàn)代生活做出了消極評(píng)價(jià)。二十年后，The 1975這四個(gè)數(shù)字時(shí)代的公民交出了這張專輯，他們沒有過分譴責(zé)科技、信息和社交媒體的進(jìn)步，而是先接受再爭(zhēng)辯好壞。在這個(gè)時(shí)代，生活比以往更是陰霾密布，而這張專輯之所以震撼人心，也正是因?yàn)樗煌跁r(shí)代的細(xì)微之處。

And from those greys,?colour. Electronic flourishes to revel in. Gospel choirs to lift the soul. Every song offers an unexpected treat: the lovely ‘Surrounded By Heads And Bodies’ skips into a time-shifting drum beat where a chorus would normally sit; ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’ is Kanye-level in its virtuosic use of autotune; ‘Inside Your Mind’ blends ‘90s post-rock with torch-song balladry and ‘I Couldn’t Be More In Love’ is a pitch-perfect 1980s wedding song pastiche, one of a handful of numbers that are so wilfully big, bold and emotional you expect upcoming tours may require six encores to bash each of them out with the appropriate gravity. Perhaps the biggest surprise comes in the form of ‘Mine’, a Cole Porter-influenced jazz number that evokes golden era Hollywood, Disney soundtracks and finger-clicking crooners while reflecting wryly on modern life (“I fight crime online sometimes / I write rhymes I hide behind,”), a jarring dissonance that feels like hearing a song you’ve known your whole life for the very first time.

而在這陰霾中，七彩曙光正在綻放。電子音樂的激昂讓人狂歡，神圣的合唱讓靈魂升華。每一首歌都有獨(dú)特的驚喜：“Surrounded By Heads And Bodies（周圍遍布頭與身體）”在本應(yīng)進(jìn)入副歌的地方接了一段擊鼓，聽起來(lái)就像時(shí)空突然錯(cuò)亂；“I Like America & America Likes Me（我愛美國(guó)&美國(guó)愛我）”中自動(dòng)修音的精妙運(yùn)用達(dá)到了Kanye的水準(zhǔn)；“Inside Your Mind（你的腦海里）”結(jié)合了90年代后搖和悲情民謠；“I Couldn’t Be More In Love（我已無(wú)法愛得更深）”是80年代婚禮贊歌的完美融合，是專輯中少有的意境深遠(yuǎn)、無(wú)所畏懼、振奮人心的一首歌，這份隨心所欲讓你不禁覺得樂隊(duì)可能需要再唱六遍才能舒緩地唱完全曲。

這張專輯最令人耳目一新的歌非“Mine”莫屬。受Cole Porter影響，歌曲在挖苦現(xiàn)代生活的同時(shí)，能讓人不禁聯(lián)想到好萊塢的黃金時(shí)代，迪士尼的經(jīng)典歌曲和伴隨著敲擊指尖的低聲吟唱（“I fight crime online sometimes / I write rhymes I hide behind（有時(shí)我在網(wǎng)上生起事端／然后寫下隱藏于心底的旋律）”）。這種對(duì)比鮮明而詭異，聽著它感覺就像你頭一次看懂自己的人生。

‘Mine’ is a breathtaking piece of work, and one of many here that proves that The 1975’s core songwriting team of Matty Healy and George Daniel are not just the most accomplished and creative duo working in pop right now but the closest thing we have to a present-day Lennon and McCartney, a pair whose golden touch makes them near-enough unassailable. Clever and profound, funny and light, serious and heartbreaking, painfully modern and classic-sounding all at the same time, ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ is a game-changing album, one that challenges The 1975’s peers –?if, indeed, there are any –?to raise their game.

“Mine（我的）”一曲激動(dòng)人心。毫不例外，這首歌證明了The 1975的核心作詞團(tuán)隊(duì)Matty Healy和George Daniel在當(dāng)前流行樂界首屈一指的才華和創(chuàng)造力，就像披頭士里曾經(jīng)的Lennon和McCartney這對(duì)黃金拍檔默契的配合堅(jiān)不可摧。《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships》 是現(xiàn)代痛苦和經(jīng)典曲風(fēng)的完美結(jié)合。憑借其精明而深?yuàn)W、風(fēng)趣而平實(shí)、嚴(yán)肅而觸動(dòng)人心的創(chuàng)作，這張專輯把游戲局勢(shì)翻了一翻，讓對(duì)手們——當(dāng)然，如果有的話——除升級(jí)外無(wú)路可走。

《A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships》是流行樂壇的巨作，是專屬于這個(gè)時(shí)代的大雜燴，Healy透過他的人生經(jīng)歷，巧妙地總結(jié)了千禧一代的生活。牛油果、房?jī)r(jià)、安全空間、爵士手，專輯中每一個(gè)你聽到的玩笑都是一件藝術(shù)珍品，反映了這個(gè)最迷茫的時(shí)代中這代人的成就、智慧和人情味。這群男孩不一般吶！