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：Tyler Smith

校對：Ryan-Chopin

排版：Lynn Liu

Lorde captures emotions like none other. Her second album is a masterful study of being a young woman, a sleek and humid pop record full of grief and hedoniSm, crafted with the utmost care and wisdom.

Lorde捕捉感情的能力是獨一無二的。她的第二張專輯對于一個年輕女孩來說絕對稱得上是大師之作。在這張流暢而熱情的專輯里，你可以同時感受到極致悲傷與享樂主義，每一首歌曲都傾注著作者的對世界的關(guān)懷與獨到的智慧。

“Fluorescent”—has there ever been a better descriptor for first love? When?Lorde?sings it to the empty space beside her on “Supercut,” toward the end of her shining record?Melodrama, we share a bit of her noted?synesthesia: We see that bright, electrode glow of possibility, feel its siren shine on our faces. That neon is too beautiful to last, though; its buzz requires an effortful?chemistry.

“熒光閃閃”這個詞簡直是對初戀的最佳描述。Lorde在專輯的結(jié)尾曲目“Supercut（精彩瞬間）”里在對著四下無人的曠野吶喊著這個詞，這使我們真正地有了她通感的體驗（據(jù)TeenVogue報道，Lorde患有一種罕見的神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)疾病“聯(lián)覺”，特定的音樂會刺激她眼前出現(xiàn)特定的顏色，這種通感極大程度的幫助了她的歌曲創(chuàng)作）。我們看到的是電極間激發(fā)出的鮮艷燈光，點亮了無限可能，我們可以感受到那奪目的光輝映在臉龐，只可惜這璀璨的霓虹轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝，只有與她產(chǎn)生默契，并努力維持這種化學反應(yīng)，才能一直感受到這種奇異現(xiàn)象。

But when it is gone, the rest need not pale by comparison. The same could be said for one’s teenage years, which the 20-year-old Ella Yelich-O’Connor exits so graciously on this album. That formative era is a fraught time for girls, a dizzying span in which they’re most sought for beauty and cultural cachet yet their perspectives are forcefully minimized. Hear a song from a singer who taps their first euphorias, but know it’s merely real adults’ “fetishization.” Try to understand your ever-changing physiology, then have a porcine politician insist that it’s not yours to protect. And the growing pains feel endless; while it is horrible to be a teen girl who isn’t taken seriously by society, it’s even worse being a young woman unsure what to do with the autonomy that threatens it.

當這種奇異現(xiàn)象消失，余下的色彩依舊。這便如一個人的青春年華，而這張專輯就是Lorde給自己20歲的華麗謝幕之作。這個人生的拐角點對于一個女孩來說是憂慮重重的，同時這個時期令她們暈頭轉(zhuǎn)向，她們尋求真善美與文化認同，但她們的觀點卻遭到無情貶低；Lorde在歌中揮灑她們的極樂體驗，但卻被認作只是成年人嚴重的盲目迷戀；在努力弄清自己的生理機能時，便會有混蛋政治家說你不必操心這個問題。這樣的成長之痛似乎從未停止。年輕女孩遭受社會的輕視是可怕的，但更可怕的是年輕女性有了自主權(quán)卻迷失方向，無力向社會發(fā)起反抗。

Melodrama?is Lorde’s study of being a young woman finding her own conviction in unsteady circumstances. Sometimes, this also involves being single—a breakup and a raucous house party serve as thematic through-lines—but romance is only part of the album’s script. In the difficult, exhilarating course of the record, written largely when Lorde was?18 and 19, her true reward comes with her embrace of self. As a nod to her clearest pop forbearer, her peace is in accepting that she will, sometimes, end up?dancing on her own.

《Melodrama》是Lorde作為一個年輕女性在混亂的世界中尋找信念的作品。孤獨是無可避免會被談到的，因此，一次分手和一個嘈雜的派對成為了專輯的主線，但愛情并不是專輯的唯一主題。這張晦澀又令人興奮大部分單曲創(chuàng)作于Lorde的18、19歲。她勇敢擁抱自己并取得收獲：她極力克制使用流行元素，她內(nèi)心的平和來自于她愿意在故事的結(jié)尾獨舞。

Like her 2013 debut?Pure Heroine,?Melodrama?is a work of sleek self-possession, packed with bursts of peculiar rhymes and production that confound expected song formulas. However, while?Heroine?cast off the trappings of materialiSm atop spacious trip-pop,?Melodrama?catches the mist off of New Wave rhythms that befit the name. (Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff, in his first production for Lorde, leaves a pliant and romantic thumbprint throughout;?Heroine?veteran Joel Little also returns.) Its first single and opening track, “Green Light,” casts a long shadow in its anthemic bliss. There’s a reason Max Martin called the New Zealander’s approach “incorrect songwriting”—by no Top 40 rubric should her song fire off, within its first 60 seconds, a spectral synthesizer wobble, a strident line of house piano, a subterranean vocal plunge, and an apropos-of-nothing gear shift that feels like storm clouds ebbing to the sun. Her lyrics, too, occupy an underexplored space; reams have been written about volatile breakups and last-call debauchery, but Lorde rages in a self-aware hedoniSm, reckless in grief yet knowing that tomorrow her heart will begin to heal. (“But I hear sounds in my mind/Brand new sounds in my mind,” she exults, after thoroughly mocking the bastard in falsetto sing-song.)

《Melodrama》延續(xù)了她在2013發(fā)行的專輯《Pure Heroine》一貫的沉著自如，大量別出心裁的韻律與制作，一改傳統(tǒng)老套路。《Pure Heroine》擯棄了實用主義的種種限制，而《Melodrama》則名副其實地抓住的新潮流行旋律的導向（Bleachers的Jack Antonoff首次擔任Lorde的制作人，經(jīng)他之手，專輯遍布極富感染力的浪漫痕跡，《Pure Heroine》的參與者Joel Little也參與了這張專輯）。專輯的開場曲目“Green Light”在極樂頌歌的背后留下了長長的陰影。Max Martin稱Lorde的方法為“不正確的創(chuàng)作”是有原因的——這首歌的前60秒不具備排名榜單前四十名歌曲的任何特征：幽靈般搖擺不定的電子音效伴隨著刺耳的House樂段，人聲低沉下去時曲調(diào)卻意外地上揚，猶如浮云撥日。她的歌詞亦是前無古人，變化無常的分手狀態(tài)與紙醉金迷的驕奢生活已經(jīng)被寫爛了，但Lorde選擇在極樂中發(fā)泄怒火，肆無忌憚地沉浸在悲傷中，又有著心傷能隔夜痊愈的自信。（她興高采烈地用古怪的假聲譏諷了她的混蛋前男友后，如此唱道：“我聽見了一個嶄新的聲音從心底傳來?！保?/p>

This breakup continues to provide fodder in her keening, Kate Bush falsetto warble on “Writer in the Dark” and the creaky, atonal electronic rasp of “Hard Feelings/Loveless.” When she sways alone in “Liability,” wondering if she’s too complicated to find love, it is heartrending and uncomfortably relatable. But the album is no saccharine journal entry by any means. Her party has pills, dresses rumpled on the floor, no absence of profanity, and a sense of humor, too: the moxie it takes to not only acknowledge your extravagant emotional contortions, but wink at them drolly by calling the whole thing a?Melodrama.

一次分手為Lorde提供了源源不斷的創(chuàng)作素材：Kate Bush式的假聲吟唱，“Hard Feelings/Loveless.”中嘎吱作響的電氣聲和“Liability”中孤獨搖擺的身影，思考著自己是否太過復雜以致找不到真愛。這些元素令人心碎的同時又讓人聯(lián)想起悲傷的過往。但這張專輯絕不是揉捏做作的流水賬記錄。她的派對里不乏濫用藥物，衣衫散亂，臟話連天，卻也不失幽默：她勇敢地承認自己情感的過度扭曲，但戲謔地將它們稱作狂想曲。

Her percussive delivery, both in her Smoky lower register and lean falsetto, cuts sharpest in the bacchanalian bangers. “Sober” folds humid brass into a stutter that lightly recalls her?Heroine?hit “Royals,” along deft turns of phrase that suggest even in her imbibing, she’s too sharp to turn off self-scrutiny (“Midnight, lose my mind, I know you’re feeling it too/Can we keep up with the ruse?”). She’s a touch self-deprecating in the height of the party (“Homemade Dynamite”) and tenfold pensive as it wears down (“Perfect Places”). The record’s bittersweet trajectory feels not unlike?Yeah Yeah Yeahs’?Fever to Tell, intent on capturing both the carousing and the come-down in one breathless spree.

在這一系列狂歡頌歌中，Lorde沙啞的低音與尖銳假聲和打擊樂器的使用相得益彰。她在“Sober”里故意結(jié)巴的唱詞處使用銅管樂，頗有一絲上張專輯的大熱單曲“Royals”的遺風。句與句之間嫻熟的轉(zhuǎn)換說明了即使她喝得爛醉如泥，也仍然高度自省。（午夜/我失去心智/你知道你也有同感/我們能跟得上這些伎倆嗎？）在派對達到高潮時，她開始了自我反?。ā癏omemade Dynamite”），在高潮過后，她倍感憂慮（“Perfect Places”）。這張專輯苦中帶甜的悲劇就像Yeah Yeah Yeahs的專輯《Fever to tell》，即聚焦于狂歡，也不忘描繪狂歡中的落寞。

And the places Lorde goes on?Melodrama?really are special, particularly “The Louvre.” This track, in its gleaming synths and heartswell harmonies, captures an immersive bliss, a shared frequency of love just as irrepressibly grandiose as its sound. It’s the kind of connection that, even once it’s gone, lightens your bones forever. Whatever the next “Gossip Girl” is—whatever soapy serial next attempts to harness the teen zeitgeist with plush fabrics and sharp cheekbones—“The Louvre” will probably soundtrack its climactic moment. But as Lorde’s voice rises in it, awed in adoration as she whispers, “Well, summer slipped us underneath her tongue/Our days and nights are perfumed with obsession,” whatever’s onscreen can’t match her luminosity. It’s not enough to say Lorde is one in a generation. Really, it’s amazing this is the first time she was a teenager for how good she was at it.

狂想曲中，Lorde要去的地方不是別處，就是“The Louvre”（盧浮宮）”。在這首歌里大放異彩的電音以及令人心潮澎湃的和諧中，作者捕捉到一種讓聽眾身臨其境的愉悅、一種按捺不住的宏偉的愛的共振，這些感受一聽就能體會到。這就是那種轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝卻又能夠刻在骨子里的奇妙聯(lián)系。無論下一部《Gossip Girl》一樣的現(xiàn)象級熱播肥皂劇是什么樣的，無論現(xiàn)在的電視劇如何以靚麗衣衫和精致容顏影響青年思潮，“The Louvre”將永遠是作為高潮背景音樂的存在。當Lorde的聲音緩緩揚起，出于愛慕呢喃道：“夏天悄悄地把我們藏在她舌頭下，我們?nèi)杖找挂篂榍樗鶃y”，熒幕上的電視劇永遠不可能蓋得過Lorde的寥寥數(shù)語的光輝，Lorde代表著一個時代，更令人驚奇的是她作品中對描寫的拿捏讓人懷疑她好像經(jīng)歷過不止一次青春期。