搬運(yùn)自：網(wǎng)易云音樂專欄【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基礎(chǔ)上添加了英語原文與排版調(diào)整）

翻譯：豆目豆科

Remember 'audio cassettes'? Remember the days when the pre-digital Walkman was criticized as the most isolating and therefore masturbatory form of self-entertainment since the novel? Remember snickering about needing to buy 'head cleaner'? Remembering sacramentally disemboweling the "I Love You Forever: The Supermix" tape of a partner whose behavior later revealed that they were obviously disingenuous about the loving-you-forever thing? If only I had a turtleneck for every date that ended when, after showing me her new tattoo of the Chinese symbol for 'woman' that she still hid from Dad, the girl coyly asked what was in that big black trunk at the foot of my bed-- only to learn that it was full of releases from cassette-only labels. One even sneered, "I don't even know how to?use?a cassette," as if they were a worse misappropriation of plastic and the means of mass production than oversized "We're #1" hands for winless football teams.

還記得“盜錄磁帶”嗎？還記得數(shù)字時代之前隨身聽盛行的日子嗎？那個隨身聽尚被批評為自小說以來最聊以自慰、最“頹廢”無用的自娛方式的時光嗎？還記得曾對購買“磁帶磁頭清潔器”的人的不屑一笑嗎？還記得只舍得在婚禮上“刨腹”取出播放的自制磁帶嗎？上面還會寫著“I Love You Forever: the Supermix”的字樣，最后仍會發(fā)覺在“愛你到永遠(yuǎn)”這件事上顯然都是虛情假意?；叵肫甬?dāng)時的我我若穿著一件高領(lǐng)毛衣就好了，那次約會結(jié)束后，女孩瞞著她的父親，來到我的房間給我看她的新紋身，是一個中文的“女人”，她還會靦腆地問我床邊的黑色大箱子里裝的是什么——最后悻悻得知里面裝的都是磁帶，那時那些廠牌都只發(fā)行磁帶?？傆腥藭Υ肃椭员?，“我都不知道磁帶該怎么用”，仿佛它們才是加重塑料污染和批量生產(chǎn)濫用的罪魁禍?zhǔn)?，而不是那些腦殘粉給從來沒有過勝績的球隊做的超大“We're #1”應(yīng)援板。

As big an oddball on the underground landscape as Stephin Merritt, Mountain Goat John Darnielle understands how to harness the majesty of the practically aborted cassette format. He appeared on nearly every cassette-only label's compilation during their golden era of Xerox-ed and Crayola-ed cover art, and released his band's first three proper albums of passionate nasal-fi straight to tape. A zillion vinyl releases and ten CDs later, and the Goats have offered the world what 'they' would have us believe is the highest-profile concept album ever recorded on a jambox, complete with grinding gears that sound like Darnielle rigged a stethoscope to the saliva glands of a retired android. And despite consistently featuring more hey's, la's and whoa's than Ringo Starr's spiral lyric notebook (hanging on the wall of the Hard Rock Cafe in Bent Musket, Georgia, if you want to check it out), Darnielle's yelled lyrics continue to pierce layers of the listener's inner ice. Foes of profane merriment beware: the chorus of "Jenny" employs a "hi-diddle-dee-dee-goddamn." Who else could, with only an abused acoustic guitar accompanying him, pull off a line as prosaic as, "We tried to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things"?

同Stephin Merritt一樣，The?Mountain Goats樂隊的John Darnielle也是地下音樂界的一個大怪人，他知道怎樣重新喚起幾乎被廢止的磁帶的威嚴(yán)。他的身影幾乎會出現(xiàn)在所有磁帶廠牌發(fā)行的匯編中，在他們復(fù)印或涂鴉式封面藝術(shù)的黃金時代，甚至直接選擇用磁帶發(fā)行了他樂隊的前三張激情澎湃的直錄專輯。數(shù)百萬張黑膠唱片和十張CD之后，The?Mountain Goats樂隊為世界帶來了“他們”會讓我們相信這是有史以來用干擾器錄制出的最引人矚目的概念專輯，聽起來就像Darnielle把聽診器放在一個退役仿生人的“唾液腺”——相互摩擦打滑的生銹齒輪上。盡管Darnielle口中的“hey”,“l(fā)a”和“whoa”比Ringo Starr的復(fù)讀式歌詞（如果你想看的話，還掛在喬治亞州Bent Musket的Hard Rock Cafe店的墻上）還要多，但Darnielle吶喊而出的歌詞依舊足以穿透聽眾內(nèi)心的冰層。褻瀆歡樂的壞寶寶要小心了：“Jenny”的副歌里“hi-diddle-dee-dee-goddamn”，你能忍住不笑算我輸。還有誰能用一把已經(jīng)快要報廢的木吉他寫出像“We tried to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things”這樣散文般的句子？

?The songs here that aren't sagas of wayward youths chronicle the trajectories of various loves, from courtship, to feeding fruit to each other, to divorce and/or death, and sometimes even to hell. Which brings up "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," and its bold invocation of the Prince of Darkness: the marginalization of God cost rock one of its central components, which Darnielle resurrects with his emphatic envoy, "Hail Satan!" Though Darnielle palpably dissed Glenn Danzig in a recent issue of his zine?Last Plane to Jakarta, moments like the chanting of "Hail Satan," that blend earnestness with clever condescension, provide clues to how Darnielle does his thing. He plays with tone, dipping sophistication in the muck of primitivity, sampling bits of Emily Du(i)ckinson,?T.S. Eliot, and Philip Larkin in his home-taped, sentimental wimp-rock, involving just enough brain food to prevent that Scorsese-bred part of me from suggesting, "Ayy! I got some Clorox that'll get that heart off your sleeve."

專輯里的歌并非不羈青年的傳奇故事，而記錄著各樣愛情的蹤跡，從求愛、到互喂水果、到離異或是一方逝世，有時甚至來到地獄。“The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”，在這首歌里他高呼黑暗王子撒旦的名號：對上帝的邊緣化也是搖滾樂的核心組成部分之一，Darnielle的口號“Hail Satan!”讓這一熱忱復(fù)生。盡管Darnielle在他最近一期的雜志《Last Plane to Jakarta》中堅決地反對Glenn Danzig，但像“Hail Satan!”這樣的吟唱，融合有真誠和巧思毫不生硬的高傲，為Darnielle如今最終呈現(xiàn)出的模樣提供了線索。他玩弄語氣，在原始泥沼中浸泡繁雜混亂，在他的自制磁帶、多愁善感的“懦夫”搖滾中抽離出Emily Du(i)ckinson、T.S. Eliot和Philip Larkin的身影，充斥著磅礴的精神食糧，而這些有僅僅是為了防止我聽信那個Martin?Scorsese迷弟的哪怕一丁點(diǎn)建議，“Ayy! I got some Clorox that'll get that heart off your sleeve.”

Add "The Mess Inside," with its urgent account of a love that even a September jaunt to New York can't save, to the exponentially multiplying list of songs accidentally weighted with post-boxcutter connotations of homeland insecurity (as well as the lines in "Pink and Blue" about Oklahoman wind smelling like blood and smoke). After producing dozens of songs obsessed with mobility (the "Going To ________" songs), Darnielle's last three albums have been settled in one geographic region, hinting at a fusty patience or new maturity. Would you believe that "Blues In Dallas," a Hamlet-assed song with a tinny keyboard backup and JFK underpinnings, is about something as unsexy as deciding to wait, and is also really, really good?

“The Mess Inside”，其中所描繪的迫切愛情，即使趕在9月前去紐約也無法挽回，把它加到愈發(fā)冗長的歌曲列表中，無疑又加強(qiáng)了對美利堅安全與否的后BoxCutter式內(nèi)涵（以及“Pink and Blue”中類似“俄克拉荷馬州吹的風(fēng)聞起來仿佛混雜著血與煙”的詞）。在制作了幾十首癡迷于流動性的歌曲（標(biāo)題形如“Going To ________”的歌曲）后，Darnielle最后的三張專輯一直錨定同一個地理區(qū)域，好像他的耐心已經(jīng)生銹，或是說他已經(jīng)成熟。你會相信“Blues In Dallas”，這首哈姆雷特般的史詩歌曲，在尖銳的鍵盤伴奏和肯尼迪一樣高傲的底氣加持之下，卻是關(guān)于“決定留下等待”這樣毫不性感的事情，而且它又非常、非常的出色？

Darnielle's craft can convince you to follow his classist/nostalgic aesthetic logic: this album would sound perfect on the one-speaker radio atop a custodian's pushcart. You'll start asking, how can there be a sport so colonial that it requires as much cultivated land as golf does? Since so little gets reported anyway, what justifies the competing 24-hour news channels? Didn't 'analog' movie monsters at least take up three-dimensional space on the film, unlike the computer phantoms of?Jurassic Park?that leave actors running from thin air? Does every disc in my collection really have to be a performance test that justifies my investment in all of that stereo componentry?

Darnielle的手藝可以說服你聽信他的那套古典/懷舊主義美學(xué)邏輯：這張專輯甚至在嬰兒車的辣雞收音機(jī)上都聽起來很是完美。你會開始問，怎么會有一項運(yùn)動如此殖民化，以至于需要像高爾夫球場那樣多的耕地？既然報道的內(nèi)容如此之少，又有什么理由讓一天內(nèi)各家新聞頻道相互爭得你死我活？不像《侏羅紀(jì)公園》中的后期特效那樣讓演員憑空奔跑，“模擬”電影中的怪物至少是三維空間實(shí)體吧？那么我收藏的每張碟片真的必須滿足性能測試的需要？以證明我在所有立體聲組件上的投資是合理的嗎？

At least two songs on?All Hail West Texas?flagrantly bemoan the state-of-the-art burden of uncurbed, soul-charring consumption. But whether you embrace the hiss and crackle or not, Darnielle seems to be, like the poets he cites, settled in his spot on the fringe.

在《All Hail West Texas》中，至少有兩首歌公然地對這種無節(jié)制、摧殘靈魂的高消費(fèi)，所謂先進(jìn)、高級的負(fù)擔(dān)報以鄙夷的目光。但不管你是否接受這種劈里啪啦，嘶嘶作響的底噪，Darnielle就像他引用的詩人一樣，在角落中尋得自己的安身之所。