翻譯：Nomanlandever

Lorde returns with a self-aware, scaled-back album. Its holistic beauty and revelations about the natural world are often lost in the drab music.

Lorde帶著一張自我意識，返璞歸真的專輯回歸樂壇。專輯的整體美和對自然世界的揭示常常迷失在單調(diào)的音樂中。

You have to act so dumb to be happy, nowadays. You can’t read the news and you can’t check social media; don’t look at the death toll, don’t look at the wildfire, don’t look at the weather. How do you separate yourself from the world without succumbing to denial? Maybe you could go away for a while—take some time to recharge. New Zealand sounds nice. I think the air is cleaner.

當(dāng)今，你似乎只有裝聾作啞才能得到快樂。不能看新聞，不能打開社交媒體；不看死亡人數(shù)，不看火災(zāi)，不看天氣。如何才能在不自我麻痹的條件下與世界脫軌呢？也許你可以閉關(guān)一段時間——給自己充充電。新西蘭聽起來不錯。我認為那兒的空氣更干凈。

Lorde?is there, and she’s chilling. After she wrapped the world tour for her second album, 2017’s?Melodrama, she went home to Auckland and was hardly seen in public. She undertook a tech detox, giving up social media and setting her phone screen to grayscale, to make it?less enticing. When she wanted to gain perspective on the climate crisis, she traveled to Antarctica. She made?Solar Power, a self-aware, scaled-back album that asks you to “breathe out and tune in,” like a strange little paperbound spiritual text at a hippie bookshop. It’s part newfound realization of social and environmental consciousness, part self-help guide: her rationale for choosing the quiet life and reconnecting with nature, a diagram for threading the needle of joy when you might also live to see the end of Earth. Her message is—literally—light.

Lorde在那兒，寒風(fēng)刺骨。在她結(jié)束第二張專輯《Melodrama》的世界巡演后，她回到奧克蘭的家，便很少在公眾場合露面。她戒了科技癮，拋棄社交媒體，把手機屏幕調(diào)成灰色，讓它不那么誘人。當(dāng)她想進一步探究氣候危機時，她前往南極洲旅行。她做出《Solar Power》，一張自我意識，返璞歸真的專輯，讓你“邊呼氣邊聽專輯”，就像嬉皮書店里的一本奇怪的簡裝精神讀物。這本書一部分是對社會和環(huán)境意識的新認識，一部分是自助指南：她選擇寧靜生活并重新接觸自然的原因，是當(dāng)你可能還活到地球末日之時，還可以通過圖表穿針引線出快樂。她傳遞出的信息——無疑是——光明的。

Once, a Lorde album was a monument years in the making, but here she asks us to be satisfied with everyday beauty, unassuming arrangements of guitar, keys, percussion, and voice. Produced once again with the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff,?Solar Power?sounds more interesting when it bottles the jasmine air of Laurel Canyon folk, less interesting when it emulates that sound’s descendants in early-2000s soft rock (Sheryl Crow, Jewel) without any of the hooks or energy of radio pop. These songs don’t move like the songs on?Melodrama: no startling change-ups, no fireworks, just a spoken interlude by?Robyn?and a few distracting foley effects. On the title track and on the closer, Lorde communes directly with nature, and in between, she smuggles in love songs, dreams, doubts, a memorial for her late dog, Pearl, and, for the first time, close vocal harmonies with other singers, including?Clairo?and?Phoebe Bridgers. It is the first Lorde album that doesn’t try to tug on your sleeve, or stare directly into your eyes. It feels like doing less.

曾經(jīng)，Lorde的專輯象征著時代的里程碑。但如今，Lorde通過低調(diào)的吉他、琴鍵、打擊樂器和聲音的編曲，讓我們樂觀對待美麗的生活。又一次由無處不在的Jack Antonoff制作，《Solar Power》當(dāng)裝進月桂峽谷(Laurel Canyon)民謠的茉莉花空氣時，聽上去更為有趣，當(dāng)它沒有任何hook和電臺流行音樂的味道，而是模仿21世紀(jì)初軟搖滾(Sheryl Crow, Jewel)的音樂時，就不那么有趣了。這些歌曲不像Melodrama上的歌曲那樣動人：沒有令人驚喜的變化，沒有燃點，只有一段Robyn朗讀的插曲和一些令人分心的愚蠢音效。在專輯同名曲和收尾曲中，Lorde直接與自然親密交流，在專輯中段，她偷偷夾雜了情歌、夢想、懷疑、悼念她已故的狗Pearl，等元素，并首次與包括Clario和Phoebe Bridgers在內(nèi)的其他歌手和聲。這是Lorde的第一張沒有試圖拉你的袖子，或直勾勾盯著你眼睛的專輯。感覺更為簡潔。

Lorde didn’t log off entirely; people who live under rocks aren’t nearly so well-versed in?Antonoff discourse. Did you see her putting away Hot Ones like they’re?chicken nuggets? She’s been reading about the Sacklers (“Born in the year of OxyContin”) and watching Tarantino (“Once upon a time in Hollywood…”). She’s subscribing to trendy newsletters and?checking her finsta, which maybe helps explain the album’s bent towards Y2K vibes and wellness fads.?Solar Power?is a little bit out-of-time, but now and then it taps into the kind of paralyzing quarter-life celebrity crisis found recently on albums by?Billie Eilish?and?Clairo. “Teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash,” Lorde says on opener “The Path,” explaining what she’s escaped. She begins the gorgeous “California” with Carole King?announcing?her Grammy win for her hit single “Royals” in 2014 and writes a breakup song personifying Los Angeles as a “golden body” with a “cool hand around my neck.” She’s grateful to be away from it all, until she isn’t, and on the next song, “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” she wonders what might happen if she changed her mind and reclaimed her place among the glitterati.

Lorde也沒有完全退網(wǎng)；山頂洞人是不可能了解Jack Antonoff近期的事情的。你有見到她徹底忽略熱點話題，把它們當(dāng)成雞塊一樣。她一直在讀薩克勒夫婦(《生于奧施康定之年》)的故事，也在看?Tarantino(《好萊塢往事》)。她訂閱著潮流通訊，查看自己的finsta，這或許有助于解釋為何這張專輯傾向Y2K和健康時尚文化。盡管《Solar Power》有點過時，但時不時地會像最近Billie Eilish和Clairo的新專輯一樣探討名人的青年危機?！癟een millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash,” Lorde在《The Path》中唱道，解釋了為什么她選擇逃離的原因。華麗歌曲《California》開頭，Lorde講述著Carole King在2014年格萊美給她的熱單《Royals》頒獎的故事，且寫下一首分手歌曲，將洛杉磯化身為“金色的身體”，“一只冰冷的手摟在我的脖子上”。她很感激能遠離這一切。在下一首歌《Stoned at the Nail Salon》中她想知道，如果她改變主意，重新在上流社會占據(jù)一席之地，會發(fā)生什么。

More than ever, Lorde’s writing is the best part of her music, if only because the music is a little disappointing. “You felled me clean as a pine,” she sings to her lover on “The Man With the Axe,” and describes the dark concavity of a concert arena that’s shiny as a manicure and transient as the tide: “Fingernail worlds, like favorite seashells/They fill up my nights and then they float away.”The words are elegant, compact, enormous, rich in a kind of organic imagery that distinguishes?Solar Power?from Lorde’s past work. But while?Melodrama?purportedly unfolded within the confines of a house party, the concept came so naturally you didn’t have to think about it; it just felt like you were there.?Solar Power?tries to be bigger and smaller at the same time, spanning scenes of domestic bliss and apocalyptic flight without the conceptual architecture to unite them.

Lorde在專輯的歌詞寫作前所未有的是專輯中最棒的部分，如果只是因為音樂有點令人失望的話。?“You felled me clean as a pine,”?她在《The Man With the Axe》中對著情人唱道，描繪出體育館演唱會燈光暗處與指甲油一樣閃亮且與潮水一樣轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝的場面：“Fingernail worlds, like favorite seashells/They fill up my nights and then they float away.”?文字優(yōu)雅，緊湊，宏大，富有有機意象，這是《Solar Power》與Lorde舊作的最大區(qū)別。但《Melodrama》據(jù)稱是在一個家庭聚會的范圍內(nèi)展開的，這個概念舒展的如此自然，以至于你不用去動腦想象，如同身臨其境。《Solar Power》既想做大也想做小，跨越家庭幸福和世界末日航班的場景，但概念不能將它們結(jié)合起來。

Trying for everything makes it all sound a little incoherent. On “Dominoes,” we watch an abuser skate free by reinventing himself as a new-age guy. There’s a kernel of a great idea in the way Lorde taps her voice across the syllables of the chorus, but the slack, demo-style recording won’t let it develop; city sirens ring in the distance as Antonoff’s guitar playing transports us to the grooviest coffeehouse on the beach. Three songs later, on “Mood Ring,” Lorde steps into a phony woo-woo persona herself, as if she too can buy the cure at a crystal shop. “Mood Ring,” as the artist was immediately at pains to say, is a satire of contemporary emotional detachment, a joke about a phone with a color screen—yet it’s too sweet to be biting, not sufficiently exaggerated to be funny, certainly not funny enough to pull off the squiggle of synth that enters beneath the line, “Let’s fly somewhere Eastern.” The shallowness comes to a head on “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All),” where the secret wisdom is occasionally heartbreaking (“’Member what you thought was grief before you got the call?”) and more often platitudinal (“You gotta want it for yourself”).

什么都嘗試的做法會讓專輯變得有些不連貫。在《Dominoes》中，我們看到一個藥物濫用者通過將自己改造成一個新時代的人而逃脫懲罰。Lorde用她的聲音輕敲副歌的音節(jié)，這個想法的本身很棒，但松散Demo式錄音扼殺了更多的潛質(zhì)。城市的警笛聲在遠處響起，Jack Antonoff的吉他演奏把我們帶到海灘上最時髦的咖啡館。三首歌后，在《Mood Ring》中，Lorde變?yōu)橐粋€虛偽迷信的人，好似她能在水晶商店中購買到治愈良方?！禡ood Ring》”這位藝術(shù)家立即痛苦地說，是一首諷刺當(dāng)代情感冷淡，一個關(guān)于彩屏手機的笑話——但似乎過于甜蜜，不夠辛辣，也不適合夸張的搞笑，在歌曲推進到歌詞“Let’s fly somewhere Eastern.”?時，確實顯得有些無聊。這種膚淺在《Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)》中達到頂點，歌曲中的秘密智慧偶爾令人動情(“’Member what you thought was grief before you got the call?”)，更多的時候則是陳詞濫調(diào)?(“You gotta want it for yourself”).

It’s worth making art that promises a way out, art that can approach climate anxiety with clear eyes and purpose instead of dissonance and dread. But most of?Solar Power?doesn’t solicit strong emotion in either direction. Shouldn’t an album about climate grief and puppy grief and social grief by one of the best pop songwriters of her generation make you?feel?something? The music cycles through chipper acoustic chords, mournful six-string lines, and drummer Matt Chamberlain’s effortless shuffle, never locking into the bittersweet angst of Natalie Imbruglia, the cerebral intricacy of Jewel, the mutual conviction of a TLC ballad. It’s soft and loose and textureless. The sharpest pain comes in a moan at the end of “Fallen Fruit,” one of two incantatory interludes inspired, if we can call it that, by pending environmental collapse: “How can I love what I know I am gonna lose?/Don’t make me choose.”

制作一張確保有始有終的專輯，一張能清晰理智看待氣候問題的焦慮情緒，而不是情緒失控和恐懼的心態(tài)看待。但《Solar Power》里的多數(shù)歌曲都不會帶有過于強烈的情緒。由Lorde，同時代最優(yōu)秀的流行歌曲作家之一，創(chuàng)作的關(guān)于氣候變化悲痛、寵物辭世悲痛和社會問題悲痛的專輯難道不應(yīng)該讓你有所感觸嗎？專輯充盈著活潑的原聲和弦，悲傷的六弦線，和鼓手Matt Chamberlain輕易做出的慢切分節(jié)奏，專輯沒有陷入Natalie Imbruglia式苦樂參半的焦慮，Jewel式錯綜復(fù)雜的思考，TLC抒情曲的共同信念，而是柔軟、松散、沒有紋理感的。專輯最痛楚之處出現(xiàn)在《Fallen Fruit》結(jié)尾處的一處呻吟，兩段咒語般的插曲之一，靈感，如果我們可以這樣說，來自即將到來的生態(tài)崩潰“How can I love what I know I am gonna lose??/Don’t make me choose.”?

“Fallen Fruit” and its sister “Leader of a New Regime” are weird songs, but?Solar Power?leaves so much room to be weirder, wilder, more joyful. I’m thinking of something Lorde said to the newsletter?Blackbird Spyplane?about why she went to Antarctica and what she learned there: “To go someplace where all you’re thinking about all day is the climate and environment was clarifying, and also kind of mystifying.”?Clarifying and mystifying: Is there any other way to feel in the thrall of our only planet? But there’s just one moment on?Solar Power?that does. It’s at the very end, “Oceanic Feeling,” after Lorde rambles around for a while, visiting a favorite ocean bluff, reflecting on the lives of her family members and future daughter, on her past self. The beat drops away, the music falls to a murmur, and in a fluttering voice, she calls up a beachside bonfire and ponders metaphoric self-immolation. The implication is that Lorde does not want to do this, not like this, forever; that true happiness will always be out there in front of you, the deep blue shadow over the water.

《Fallen Fruit》和姐妹歌曲《Leader of a New Regime》是兩首古怪的歌，但《Solar Power》留下的空白想象空間更奇怪、更狂野、更快樂。我在回想Lorde在Blackbird Spyplane采訪中的話語，內(nèi)容是她為什么去南極洲，以及在那里學(xué)到了什么：“去一個你整天只想著氣候和環(huán)境的地方，既更能理清問題，又帶有點神秘氣息?！眱艋c神秘：束縛在我們唯一的家園地球上還能有其他方式來感受嗎？但《Solar Power》出現(xiàn)的一瞬間確實能感受到，在專輯很末尾處的《Oceanic Feeling》中，Lorde隨處漫步了一段時間后，去到了她最喜歡的海邊懸崖，思考了她的家人和未來女兒的生活，回憶了過去的自己。節(jié)拍漸漸消失，音樂變?yōu)槟剜驼Z，她用顫抖的聲音召喚起一堆海濱篝火，思考著自我犧牲的隱喻。言下之意是Lorde不想這樣做，不想永遠做這樣的選擇；真正的幸福永遠在你面前，就像水面上深藍色的陰影。