翻譯：Nomanlandever

Imperfection is always a virtue in Lorde’s world—whether it’s the “incorrect songwriting” of her fantastically nonlinear banger “Green Light,” her unchosen solitude on “Liability,” or the manic expressive dancing these new songs inspire within her. She has said that her upcoming second album, Melodrama, charts the trajectory of a single house party, which is a little funny in this context—the searching introspection of these songs doesn't quite scream “rager” yet. But Lorde is a songwriter who still vividly celebrates out-of-step self-possession.

在Lorde的世界里，不完美的瑕疵永遠是畫龍點晴之處。無論是“非正常模式作曲”的幻想非線性結構神曲《Green Light》，只剩她行只影單的《Liability》，還是這些新歌在她內(nèi)心激發(fā)出的狂躁且富于表現(xiàn)力的舞蹈。她談到她即將發(fā)行的第二張專輯《Melodrama》描繪了一次家庭聚會的情景，在以下文字中顯得有些滑稽——這些歌曲中的自我探索，自我反省并未顯現(xiàn)出完全的尖叫“狂怒”。但Lorde還是一位能把超乎理性的多彩情感寫的繪聲繪色的歌曲創(chuàng)作者。

Where does the party end? Melodrama closer “Perfect Places” cuts to the 3 a.m. heart-to-heart. The track slides in on a spacious, charcoal beat à la Pure Heroine’s “Team,” but reality has grown crueler since then. In “Perfect Places,” Lorde’s heroes are dying; she can’t stand the headlines; the weather is disagreeable. The world around is becoming less recognizable, and how to cope? “Now I can’t stand to be alone,” she sings.

派對何時收場?《Melodrama》收尾曲《Perfect Places》將此終于凌晨3點的談心話語。歌曲開頭與《Pure Heroine》里的歌曲《Team》的遼闊的木炭節(jié)奏很相似，但之后的實際走向更為無情殘酷，Lorde的英雄戰(zhàn)士們消失殆盡；她不能忍受頭條新聞；天氣陰沉。周遭的世界越來越錯綜復雜，該怎樣應對呢？“Now I can’t stand to be alone,” 她唱道。

If there is an argument to be made for partying as a mechanism of survival, this Lorde song bolsters it. “Perfect Places” is about the extents we go to in order to feel more alive, but it spares no details of “graceless,” grotesque real life—the consequences of “nights spent off our faces.” The promise of the house party is so rarely fulfilled: At any age, you are unlikely to find utopia in a drink and a stranger. By the end of the song, with the raspy inflection of experience, Lorde asks, “What the fuck are perfect places anyway?” There are none. But the path to figuring that out comes close.

如果這里有場關于“為了生活而選擇虛偽狂歡”的討論，Lorde這首歌引申出的話題。盡管《Perfect Places》講述的是我們?yōu)楦械秸嬲盎钪倍龅膰L試，但它也未忽略對不光彩的怪誕現(xiàn)實生活的描寫——?“nights spent off our faces.”的后果。家庭聚會的承諾很少兌現(xiàn)：無論什么年齡，你都不太可能在酒精或陌生人中找到烏托邦之地，在歌曲結尾，Lorde帶著一種刺耳的語調(diào)，問道:?“What the fuck are perfect places anyway?答案是沒有，但只要明白這一點，你便會更可能接觸到通往完美之地的道路。