搬運自：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

The New Zealand songwriter returns with a sparse and oblique album whose gentle psychedelic folk and beguiling free association proudly resist interpretation.

這位新西蘭的作曲家?guī)е粡埡啒愣畹膶］嫐w來，其溫和的迷幻民謠與誘人的自由聯(lián)想堅決地拒絕庸雜的闡釋。

Not everything has to come to a logical conclusion; not everything needs to be?about?something. In her lecture “The Sentence Is a Lonely Place,” the writer Garielle Lutz explains her fondness for language where “the sentence is a complete, portable solitude, a minute immediacy of consummated language.” By that, she means that language, for some, is at its best when it can be isolated, when it takes on a sort of synesthetic, acoustic resonance. You can apply this terminology to the songwriting of New Zealand’s?Aldous Harding, who, for four albums, has made folk music with a conceptual weight that’s difficult to categorize or assign to any established narrative. Her latest album,?Warm Chris,?is a record of the portable solitude that Lutz writes about: It is opaque, surreal, and above all, lonely.

并非所有的事物都必須有一個邏輯結(jié)論；也不是所有東西都需要與什么相關(guān)。在她的演講《The Sentence Is a Lonely Place》中，作家Garielle Lutz談道“一個語句是語言所能實現(xiàn)的最精巧簡練、同時也不失完整的‘便攜式孤獨’”，直言她對語言的熱愛。這里的意思是，對某些人而言，當人們能將語言與實際情形疏離開，并使之呈現(xiàn)出某種聯(lián)覺的聲學共鳴時，便實現(xiàn)了語言的最佳狀態(tài)。你完全可以將這一術(shù)語挪用于新西蘭藝術(shù)家Aldous Harding的詞曲創(chuàng)作中，她在她的四張專輯中制作出極具概念重量的民謠音樂，難以歸類或分配給任何既定的敘事法則。她的最新專輯《Warm Chris》便是屬于Lutz所寫的“便攜式孤獨”的專輯。它晦澀難懂、遠超現(xiàn)實，但最重要的是，它與孤獨相擁。

At first blush,?Warm Chris?is almost a discouraging listen. Its soft, slightly psychedelic folk pop is deceptively thorny and dense. You have to learn how to listen to it, kind of like how you have to teach yourself how to read Samuel Beckett or Renata Adler. It is less accessible than 2019’s?Designer: Most of the pop hooks and acoustic bass drops are gone. It moves slowly, and the music flourishes where you least expect it. A song like “Ennui” builds in waves, with an arrangement that snakes from strident pianos to squeezes of baritone sax. Harding’s voice sounds plucked from a dream, growing more awake as the song progresses. “No one look/And a canny fucking fill/Don’t lie to me!” she sings in one moment. It doesn’t really make sense, but it’s not supposed to: Harding wants you to find your own logic. “I just want everyone to feel like a philosopher. You put on a record, and that record belongs?to you,” she said in a?recent Pitchfork interview.

乍一聽，《Warm Chris》幾乎是一個令人沮喪的體驗。它柔軟、略帶迷幻色彩的民謠流行樂會讓人渾身泛起雞皮疙瘩。但你必須學會如何聆聽這張專輯，就像你必須勒令自己學會閱讀Samuel Beckett或是Renata Adler的著作。這張專輯比19年的《Designer》更不容易理解：絕大多數(shù)的流行Hook和原聲貝斯下行都不見了。它緩緩行進，旋律在你最不意想不到的地方榮發(fā)滋長。像“Ennui”這樣的歌曲聲波一浪高過一浪，從尖銳的鋼琴到低音薩克斯擠壓聲道的過度，曲風蜿蜒曲折。Harding的聲音像從夢中傳來，隨著歌曲的行進，她的聲音愈加明晰。某一刻，她唱道：“No one look/And a canny fucking fill/Don’t lie to me!”這其實并無確切的涵義，但也并非毫無意義：Harding只是希望你能從中找到自己的邏輯。她在最近的Pitchfork采訪中說“我只是希望每個人在聽這張專輯時都能發(fā)覺自己的哲思。你播放這一張唱片，那這張唱片就屬于你?！?/p>

Harding is a painstaking songwriter, even though her lyrics tend to veer toward disorder. At times, the vantage point can feel almost dissociative. On “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” she subverts a traditional song title into something alien and mournful. Banjos and horns bloom?brilliantly as Harding sings about love, and her words are soft and searching, as if she were narrating the view through a train window. On the title track, her voice drops from soprano to alto and she sings about watching paper planes burn. Her delivery almost recalls a lullaby, and the tape hiss in the background is as gentle and constant as the sound of waves heard from within a seaside home.

Harding是一個嘔心瀝血的詞曲作家，即使她的歌詞往往傾向于無序混沌。有時，身處恰當?shù)臅r機、地點她的音樂會讓人感覺到幾乎是割裂、游離的。在“She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain”中，她顛覆了傳統(tǒng)簡短歌名，轉(zhuǎn)而使之變作一種陌生和哀傷的存在。當Harding唱起愛時，班卓琴和號角燦爛地綻放，她的話語柔和而透徹，仿佛她只是在隨意描述著車窗外的景色。在專輯同名曲中，她的聲音自女高音漸漸降至中音，歌唱著目睹紙飛機燃燒。她的表達方式總會讓人想起搖籃曲，背景中磁帶的嘶嘶聲就像身處海景房里聽到的海浪聲一樣溫和而延綿。

For all her inscrutable intensity, there are also moments of levity and light. “Lawn” is sneaky and surreal, the kind of song that demands you put on?vintage Mary Quant?and go boogie—or turn into a human-sized gecko wearing Twiggy eyeliner, which is what happens to Harding in the?video. On “Leathery Whip,” her voice bends abruptly from the sound of a long-haired songwriter living in Laurel Canyon circa 1972 to that of the chipmunk outside her window. “Here comes life with his leathery whip/Here comes life with his leathery leathery!” she exclaims, joined by the flat, freaky baritone of?Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson. She draws out her words as she sings, blowing up vowels like twisty balloons. It’s funny yet vaguely threatening, like the last thing you’d hear before Harry Houdini saws you in half.

對于她的歌曲蘊涵著高深莫測的力量，但也不乏輕松和明亮的時刻?！癓awn”是低微而又超現(xiàn)實的，這種歌曲需要你穿上復(fù)古Mary Quant長款體恤，然后奔向舞池；或是變作一個人形壁虎，畫上尖佻的眼線，這也是MV中發(fā)生在Harding身上的事。在“Leathery Whip”中，她的聲音會突然從1972年左右生活在勞雷爾峽谷的長發(fā)歌者的聲音變作在她窗外駐足觀望的花栗鼠的聲音?！癏ere comes life with his leathery whip/Here comes life with his leathery leathery!”她感嘆道，于此同時，樂隊Sleaford Mods主腦Jason Williamson平坦、怪異的男中音也加入進來。她一邊唱一邊牽引出她的詞，像吹癟氣球一樣吐出元音。這很有趣，但也有點驚悚，像是你在Harry Houdini把你鋸成兩半之前聽到的最后一句話。

The sound of?Warm Chris?is sparse and oblique, and trying to anchor yourself in Harding’s lyrics can feel like organizing a narrative from the shape of passing clouds. But that’s also where its brilliance lies, what makes this some of Harding’s best songwriting yet.?Warm Chris?asks you to surrender catchiness and legibility and think instead about how a lyric like “sometimes shepherds have it right” (from “Staring at the Henry Moore”) might also be infused with inexplicable melancholy. Or why on “Lawn,” you have to suppress a giggle when Harding rhymes “They don’t mean a thing to me” with “All these lamps are free!” She favors this kind of free association, unconnected turns of phrase that synthesize the strange, lonely resonance of staring at a piece of abstract art or visiting an empty beach in winter. These are concrete images, but?Warm Chris?isn’t explicit about anything: The feelings you have when you?experience these songs are yours alone.

專輯中的聲音是簡樸而含蓄、娓娓道來，試圖將你的全部注意力錨定在Harding的文本之中，這感覺像要從飄過的云朵中捕捉到一個具體的輪廓。但這也是它的精彩所在，也揭示了究竟是什么造就了Harding如此優(yōu)良的詞曲創(chuàng)作?！禬arm Chris》要求你摒棄一貫的朗朗上口和可讀性，轉(zhuǎn)而思考為什么像“sometimes shepherds have it right”（出自“Staring at the Henry Moore”）這樣的詞也會被注入莫名其妙的悲傷；或是為何在“Lawn”中，當Harding選擇用“They don’t mean a thing to me”和“All these lamps are free!”押韻時，你會不禁笑出聲。她鐘愛于這種漫無邊際的自由暢想、豪不相干的語義轉(zhuǎn)折，混雜有盯著一件抽象藝術(shù)作品或是在冬天訪問一個空曠海灘的奇怪而孤獨的情感共鳴。這些都是如此具象，但《Warm Chris》從未明確闡明了什么：當你體驗這些歌曲時，你究竟是什么感受只有你自己知道。