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

翻譯：Lynn Liu

審譯：Ryan-Chopin

排版：Ryan-Chopin

On the 52-minute vision quest that is their new double LP, the world’s most earnest arena band sound looser than they have in years.

Coldplay推出了一張長達52分鐘的雙碟專輯，這張專輯是這支全球最努力的樂隊近些年來聽起來最放松的一張專輯。

Chris Martin is backstage at?Saturday Night Live?discussing the Syrian refugee crisis with a group of teenagers. A few feet away, his longtime bandmate Jonny Buckland briefly drowns out the conversation to check his guitar tone, and Martin outstretches an arm to silence him in a somewhat papal display of intraband passive aggression. Buckland mutes his strings; Martin returns to the teens. “You see all these pictures of young people like you—and a bit older people like us—having to leave their countries,” he?says, “and everyone calls them ‘refugees’ instead of just people.” So, he explains,?Coldplay’s new song “Orphans” is his attempt to communicate how any of us could be in their position, longing to return to our normal existence. Its walloping chorus goes, “I want to know/When I can go/Back and get drunk with my friends.” Tonight when the cameras roll, Martin instructs the teenagers to dance accordingly, with abandon.

Chris Martin在《周六夜現(xiàn)場》的后臺和一群年輕人談?wù)摿藬⒗麃喌碾y民危機。離他不遠(yuǎn)處，他的樂隊成員Jonny Buckland在檢查吉他的音色，因此這段談話被短暫地淹沒了，Martin伸出手示意他安靜下來，像是在帶內(nèi)消極抵抗一樣。Buckland把吉他的聲音調(diào)小了一些后，Martin回到年輕人之中。他說:“你們看到很多像你們這樣的年輕人，還有像我們這樣的稍微年長一點的人被迫離開他們的國家的照片，每個人都稱他們?yōu)椤y民’，而不僅僅稱他們是‘人’”。因此，他解釋說，在Coldplay的新歌“Orphans”中，他試圖向我們傳達這樣的信息：我們?nèi)魏稳硕伎赡芴幵谒麄兊奈恢?，渴望回歸正常生活。歌中的大合唱是這樣的:“I want to know/When I can go/Back and get drunk with my friends.（我想知道/我什么時候能回家/和我的朋友們喝個酩酊大醉。）”當(dāng)晚，當(dāng)攝像機開始拍攝時，Martin讓孩子們盡情地跳舞。

And yet, even by poorly mixed?SNL?standards, the performance falls flat. The song itself is solid: a style of traditional character-driven folk storytelling and pure pop bliss that Martin has aged gracefully into. And his bandmates—guitarist Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion—remain as emphatic and unobtrusive as ever as they lay out his runway. But the very thing Martin asks from the young dancers doesn’t quite ring true. Somewhere amid their joyful choreography, the pro-forma Coldplay anthem, and the humanitarian crisis that inspired it lies a diSconnect: After spending two decades trying to transcend the throes of our humdrum existence, how do Coldplay find their place within it?

然而，即使以不高的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來衡量，Coldplay在《周六夜現(xiàn)場》的表現(xiàn)也是平平。這首歌本身是有質(zhì)感的：一種以傳統(tǒng)人物為主導(dǎo)的民間故事且包含了純粹流行樂的風(fēng)格，Martin很好地融入其中。而他的樂隊成員——吉他手Buckland、貝斯手Berryman和鼓手Will Champion——在表演時，他們一如既往地耀眼又謙遜。但Martin要求年輕舞者做的事情聽起來卻不太真實。在他們歡快的舞蹈、Coldplay形式上的頌歌以及刺激歌中的人道主義危機之間，存在著某種脫節(jié):在花20年時間試圖超越我們單一存在的痛苦之后，Coldplay如何在其中找到自己的位置?

?It’s the challenge they face on their new double album,?Everyday Life. The moody 52-minute vision quest is spread over two distinct halves, titled?Sunrise?and?Sunset, giving the band enough space for an unadorned voice memo and a multi-part epic with a two-minute saxophone solo. Some songs are their softest, most understated compositions since their debut, 2000’s?Parachutes,?while two others feature contributions from ubiquitous pop formalist Max Martin. There’s a sarcastic, seething folk song about gun violence and a deeply earnest ballad called “Daddy,” sung from the perspective of a neglected child. “It’s all about being human,” Martin said in an?early interview?about the record. “Every day is great and every day is terrible and every day is a blessing.” Yes it’s a cliche, but he also has tears in his eyes while he says it.

這是他們在新專輯《Everyday Life》中所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)。這張長達52分鐘的視覺探索專輯分為兩部分，分別名為《Sunrise》和《Sunset》，這給了樂隊足夠的空間來演奏一段無修飾的聲音備忘錄，以及一首多聲部大作，其中穿插了兩分鐘的薩克斯獨奏。有些歌曲是他們自2000年的處女作《Parachutes》以來最溫和、最低調(diào)的作品，而另外兩首則是大熱流行創(chuàng)作人Max Martin的作品：一首是關(guān)于槍支暴力的民歌，它很具諷刺且很激烈；另一首名是為“Daddy”的抒情歌曲，歌曲站在一個被忽視的孩子的角度，聽起來非常誠摯?！八械囊磺卸际顷P(guān)于人性的，” Martin在早期的一次采訪中談到這張唱片時說?！懊恳惶於己軅ゴ?，每一天都很可怕，每一天都是一種恩賜?！笔堑模@些話都是些陳詞濫調(diào)，但他說的時候時眼里卻含著淚水。

Despite its sprawling architecture, the album is one of the band’s most consistent, unified works. The music is filled with other voices: Nigerian vocalist Tiwa Savage, the late qawwali singer Amjad Sabri,?Alice Coltrane,?Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison, and three generations of Kutis (Fela,?Femi, and Made) are credited in the liner notes. While it can feel cluttered at times, overflowing with annotations and footnotes, it rarely feels heavy; the sequencing seems to inhale and exhale with each song, its attempts at arena peaks (“Church,” “Orphans”) followed by moments of mournful ambience. The dynamics help create a sense of space that’s been missing from nearly everything this band has recorded over the past 10 years.

盡管這張專輯結(jié)構(gòu)混亂，但它是樂隊最一致、最統(tǒng)一的作品之一。我們在專輯中也能聽到其他歌手的聲音:尼日利亞歌手Tiwa Savage，已故卡瓦力歌手Amjad Sabri，歌手Alice Coltrane和Frightened Rabbit的Scott Hutchison，以及Kutis的三代人(Fela, Femi和Made)都被記入了專輯之中。雖然它有時會讓人感覺雜亂，充斥著各種注釋和腳注，但它卻很少讓人感覺沉重;曲目的順序就像一次次呼吸，它到達全專高潮(“Church,” “Orphans”)的嘗試伴隨著悲傷的氣氛。這種動態(tài)有助于創(chuàng)造一種空間感，這是這支樂隊在過去10年間幾乎所有音樂中所缺失的。

Each of this decade’s Coldplay albums has been packaged as its own (relative) experiment, a direct reaction to its predecessor:?the pop one,?the sad one,?the happy one. And after 2015’s jubilant but uninspired?A Head Full of Dreams, the largely somber tone of?Everyday Life?feels like its own statement: a stark gray palette that makes abundantly clear what’s absent. Without the?ghastly,?trend-hopping?singles?that have weighed down their latest releases, my favorite part of the album is also its most unprocessed portion, halfway through?Sunset, where the fragments “èkó,” “Cry Cry Cry,” and “Old Friends” roll into each other like a medley at rehearsal, something they’re just testing out for potential. The melodies don’t always stick, but the performances highlight just how long it’s been since Coldplay sounded like this: a quiet band in a small room, their characteristic enthusiasm drawn from simply making music together.

十年間，Coldplay的每一張專輯都被包裝成他們自己的(相對的)實驗，是對上一張專輯的直接反應(yīng):流行的、悲傷的、快樂的。2015年的專輯《A Head Full of Dreams》讓人歡欣鼓舞，但在那之后，《Everyday Life》中就存在著的陰郁基調(diào)，就像它自己的聲明:一個純灰色調(diào)色板，讓人清晰地了解其中缺失的部分。這張專輯中，沒有強烈、緊跟時代的單曲來降低這張專輯的檔次,專輯中，我最喜歡的部分也是最原生態(tài)的部分?—— 《Sunset》中的“èkó,” “Cry Cry Cry,” 還有?“Old Friends”，它們水乳交融,就像彩排時的混亂一樣，這幾首歌曲就像是在測試潛力一樣。旋律并不總是一成不變的，演出突顯出Coldplay許久未出現(xiàn)的聲音:安靜的樂隊在一個小房間里，簡單地在一起進行音樂創(chuàng)作造就了他們特有的熱情。

These unguarded moments make Martin’s lyrics—a sore spot for this band for as long as they’ve existed—easier to forgive. “èkó” in particular, with its lapping “Bird Song” rhythm, feels so natural and breezy that you forget the chorus reads, “In Africa, the rivers are perfectly deep and beautifully wide.” More fleshed-out political songs like “Trouble in Town,” where the band’s show-stopping climax is juxtaposed with a disturbing recording of police harassment, and “Guns,” where Martin explodes in a chorus how “everything’s gone fucking crazy,” channel similar feelings of urgency. It’s as if he realized his everyman musings would sound more compelling if they were offered as the in-progress thoughts they are.

這些毫無防備的時刻讓Martin的歌詞——這支樂隊一直以來的痛處——更容易被諒解。尤其是“èkó”，以 “Bird Song”重疊的節(jié)奏，讓人感覺這首歌非常的自然、輕快，以至于你忘記了副歌是這樣寫的:“In Africa, the rivers are perfectly deep and beautifully wide.（在非洲大陸，河流深嵌于大地，水面波瀾壯闊 [歌詞源于網(wǎng)易云]）”。像“Trouble in Town”這樣的更具體的政治歌曲，樂隊的高潮部分與警方騷擾的令人不安的錄音并置，還有“Gun”，其中Martin在合唱中爆發(fā)，問道，“這一切是怎么變得如此瘋狂的”，他向聽眾傳達了類似的緊迫感。這就好像他意識到，如果把他的普通人的想法作為這張專輯的靈感，他的想法會更有說服力。

Accordingly, when it’s time to sum everything up, he finds himself at a loss. The last two tracks on the record, “Champion of the World” and “Everyday Life,” are its most traditional moments, each its own attempt to deliver a happy ending (and possibly a radio hit). “Champion of the World” finds resolution in a few mixed metaphors—a hard-won boxing match, a majestic bicycle ride, a soaring rocket ship—that all dissolve in a twinkling, singalong refrain. “Everyday Life” is less graceful in its ascent. Martin has admitted that the song itself came to him long after the band settled on the album title, and it does feel a bit like a half-filled template. For all its vague gestures toward what it means to be alive right now (“Everyone hurts, everyone cries,” Martin offers), he actually comes closest to nailing it in the opening line: “What in the world are we going to do?” Even if their answers come up short, it’s refreshing to hear Coldplay searching again, with all the rest of us.

因此，當(dāng)該總結(jié)一切的時候，他卻發(fā)現(xiàn)自己不知所措。唱片的最后兩首歌“Champion of The World”和“Everyday Life”是它最傳統(tǒng)的時刻，每首歌都試圖帶來一個圓滿的結(jié)局(可能還會在電臺引起轟動)?！癈hampion of The World”在一些混合的比喻中找到了解決的方法——一場來之不易的拳擊比賽，一次了不起的自行車騎行，一艘翱翔的飛船——所有的這些都在一個閃爍、歌唱的副歌中消失了。“Everyday Life”在其展開的過程中就沒那么優(yōu)雅了。Martin承認(rèn)，這首歌是在樂隊確定專輯名稱很長時間之后才想到的，它確實有點像一個半空的模板。盡管歌曲中對現(xiàn)下生活含糊其辭(“Everyone hurts, everyone cries（每個人都會受傷，每個人都會哭泣）”Martin寫道)，但實際上，他在開篇時就寫到:“What in the world are we going to do?（我們到底要做些什么）”即使他們的答案非常簡短，但能聽到Coldplay和我們一起再次探索問題的答案，這的確讓人神清氣爽。