Once?again?Carly?Rae?Jepsen’s?B-sides?are?just?as?good?if?not?better?than?her?A-sides.

再一次，卡莉·蕾·杰普森的B面專(zhuān)輯和她的A面專(zhuān)輯一樣好，甚至更勝一籌。

Like the heroine of a big-budget romantic comedy, Carly Rae Jepsen presents as an eminently likable everywoman, a casually self-deprecating dreamer whose composure is no match for a sudden explosion of emotional fireworks. What elevates Jepsen’s script beyond cliché is the degree of conviction she brings to the part: her fearless ability to scale the embarrassing edge of feeling and trust-fall into her music. Like Taylor Swift, Jepsen’s gift for summoning rapturous emotion is undercut only when canned sass and cringe humor take precedence over roiling passion or clear-eyed revelation. But where Swift’s every word deepens an already cultish personal mythology, Jepsen’s persona is more broadly sketched: less identifiable with a specific sound, look, or set of quirks than a sword-wielding mandate to honor the immediacy of your heart.

Her newest album, The Loveliest Time, is a companion to and loose thematic inversion of last year’s The Loneliest Time. The third in a series of B-side albums culled from Jepsen’s ultra-productive studio sessions, it is also a concentrated dose of Weird Carly, operating at the flamboyant edges of pop convention. Where The Loneliest Time was steeped in personal loss and pandemic malaise, The Loveliest is strutting and extroverted, drunk off new love and bracingly direct about desire. It is also one of the most musically diverse in her catalog, cycling through experiments that range from go-go to French touch to quasi-IDM. So long as she sings from the heart, The Loveliest Time suggests that Jepsen’s music can tolerate an enormous amount of artifice.

With a reliable set of returning collaborators including Rostam, Patrik Berger, John Hill, and Kyle Shearer, Jepsen dips into sounds that both stay the course and swerve wildly from anything else in her discography. “Kamikaze” and lead single “Shy Boy” are familiar offerings from Jepsen, slices of weapons-grade ’80s pop that roar to life off the back of muscular drum machines and spiraling Moroder synths. But The Loveliest Time also has fascinating detours. Opener “Anything to Be With You” rides a crisp go-go drumline shot through with electric guitar reminiscent of Amerie’s “1 Thing” and achieves a similar weightless groove. Buoyed by looping vocal samples and progressively massive French touch synths, standout track “Psychedelic Switch” is a glorious surrender to sensation. The strangest song by far is “After Last Night,” a glitchy piece of Rostam-produced baroque aughts pop in the vein of “Genie in a Bottle” that Jepsen transforms into a characteristic moment of starry-eyed romantic realization.

Actual loneliness on The Loneliest Time was more of a suggestion than a central conceit, and while The Loveliest Time mostly lives up to its promise of openhearted emotion, it isn’t entirely breezy. While it’s thrilling to hear the singer call the shots with a timid hottie on “Shy Boy” or lose her conscious faculties to sheer ecstasy on “Psychedelic Switch,” Jepsen’s giddy uplift is bookended by pockets of angst on mid-tempo tracks like “Aeroplanes” and “Put It to Rest.” And while they’re perfectly serviceable songs—with some incredible drumming on the latter—their inclusion affirms that this is indeed a collection of outtakes rather than a concept album. The dusky Tame Impala-style guitar on “Kollage” and car-commercial-sized synth of “Stadium Love” likewise feel out of place. Taken as a whole, though, The Loveliest Time is a solid counterpart to its sister album, trading quiet, introspective power for brassy, headlong joy.

? 卡莉·蕾·杰普森如同一部大制作浪漫喜劇中的大女主，一個(gè)非常討喜的普通女子，一個(gè)隨性自嘲的夢(mèng)想家，她的沉穩(wěn)不敵其突然爆發(fā)的情感焰火。讓你蹲的歌詞超越陳詞濫調(diào)的是她對(duì)角色的堅(jiān)定信念：她能夠無(wú)所畏懼地跨越情感的尷尬邊緣，相信自己的音樂(lè)。就像霉霉一樣，蹲妹喚起觀眾狂熱情感的天賦，只有在罐頭式的譏諷和令人討厭的幽默取代了洶涌澎湃的激情或清醒的啟示時(shí)，才會(huì)被削弱。不過(guò)，你霉的每一句話(huà)都在加深人們對(duì)她的個(gè)人崇拜，而你蹲（旅游天后）的形象則更為寬泛：她的聲音、外表或怪癖雖不那么有辨識(shí)度，但卻揮舞著寶劍，向你的內(nèi)心致敬。

??她的最新專(zhuān)輯《The?Loveliest Time》是去年《The Loneliest Time》的延續(xù)，也是主題上的松散反轉(zhuǎn)。這張唱片是蹲妹超高產(chǎn)量錄音室工作中精選出的B-side系列專(zhuān)輯中的第三張，也是“Weird Carly”的集中體現(xiàn)，在流行音樂(lè)傳統(tǒng)的邊緣大放異彩?！禩he Loneliest Time》沉浸在私人的落寞和疫情的萎靡中，而《The?Loveliest Time》則趾高氣揚(yáng)、外向，沉醉于嶄新的愛(ài)情，對(duì)欲望直言不諱。這同時(shí)也是她音樂(lè)風(fēng)格最多樣化的一部作品，從go-go到French touch，再到準(zhǔn)IDM，她都有涉足。《The?Loveliest Time》證明了你蹲只要發(fā)自?xún)?nèi)心地歌唱，她的音樂(lè)就可以容忍大量的矯揉造作。

? 在Rostam、Patrik Berger、John Hill和Kyle Shearer等一批可靠的回歸伙伴的幫助下，你蹲的音樂(lè)既保留了一定的原有風(fēng)格，又加入了不少狂放不羈的聲音。《Kamikaze》和主打單曲《Shy Boy》都是有著熟悉“蹲式風(fēng)格”的作品，是80年代武器級(jí)流行樂(lè)的代表作，在充滿(mǎn)力量的鼓機(jī)和螺旋狀的莫洛德?tīng)柡铣善鞯囊r托下，迸發(fā)出勃勃生機(jī)。但《The?Loveliest Time》也有著令人著迷的迂回。開(kāi)場(chǎng)曲 《Anything to Be With You 》在清脆的go-go鼓點(diǎn)和電吉他的配合下，達(dá)到了類(lèi)似于 Amerie 的 《1 Thing》的那般輕盈效果。在循環(huán)的人聲采樣和逐漸龐大的法式合成器的襯托下，《Psychedelic Switch》這首突出的單曲光彩奪目，讓人沉醉其中。到目前為止，最奇特的歌曲是《After Last Night》，其為一首由 Rostam 制作的巴洛克式 Aughts Pop，與《Genie in a Bottle》一脈相承。

? 《The Loneliest Time》中的孤獨(dú)感實(shí)際更多是一種暗示，而非中心思想，雖然《The Loveliest Time》在很大程度上踐行了其開(kāi)誠(chéng)布公的情感承諾，但也并非完全輕松愉快。在《Shy Boy》一曲中，你蹲和一個(gè)羞澀的帥哥一起發(fā)號(hào)施令；在《Psychedelic Switch》一曲中，蹲妹的狂喜讓人激動(dòng)不已；而在《Aeroplanes》和《Put It to Rest》等中速曲目中，杰普森的愉悅與焦慮交織在一起。雖然這兩首歌都非常入耳（后者的鼓點(diǎn)令人拍案叫絕），但它們的收錄表明，這張專(zhuān)輯事實(shí)上是一張精選集，而非概念專(zhuān)輯?！禟ollage》中昏暗的 Tame Impala 風(fēng)格吉他和《Stadium Love》中汽車(chē)廣告體量的合成器讓人感覺(jué)格格不入。不過(guò)，整體來(lái)看，《The?Loveliest Time》與其姊妹專(zhuān)輯相得益彰，以沉靜、內(nèi)斂的力量換來(lái)了歡快、奔放的喜悅。

作者：Harry Tafoya

原文：https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/carly-rae-jepsen-the-loveliest-time/