搬運自：網易云音樂專欄【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基礎上添加了英語原文與排版調整）

翻譯：豆目豆科?

Lindsey Jordan’s exquisite second album documents love in all stages, but mostly in disrepair. She takes on a larger and poppier sound while keeping her songwriting dazzlingly sharp and passionate.?

Lindsey Jordan精致的第二張專輯記錄了各個階段的愛情，但著重描繪了愛的傷痕。她采用了更直白和更流行的聲音，但同時也保持了她詞曲創(chuàng)作中令人眼花繚亂的銳利與激情。

Lindsey Jordan’s second album as Snail Mail is for anyone who’s been bloodied by Cupid’s arrow. Offered up by a self-professed but seemingly unlucky romantic, Valentine documents love in all stages, but mostly in disrepair. Its palette extends beyond pinks and reds: There’s the envious green of seeing an old love with someone new, the consuming black of bottoming out, and, occasionally, the clear blue of weightless bliss, however fleeting. Throughout, Jordan adheres to the credo that she first announced as a rhetorical question—“Is there any better feeling than coming clean?”—on Lush, the searing debut that turned her from a suburban teenager with wicked guitar chops into a beloved indie frontwoman.

Lindsey Jordan以Snail Mail發(fā)行的第二張專輯是為那些被丘比特之箭射中而受傷的人準備的。由一個自詡但似乎并不如愿的浪漫主義者講述，《Valentine》記錄了各個階段的愛情，但著重描繪了愛的傷痕、殘缺。它的色彩超越了粉紅的界限——目睹舊愛與她的新歡在一起時令人羨妒的綠色、低谷期的黑色，以及屬于偶然間小確幸的清澈亮藍，無論它多么短暫。自始至終，Jordan堅持她最初以反問形式宣布的信條——“Is there any better feeling than coming clean?”——在《Lush》這張炙手可熱的處女作中，她從一個有著異于常人的吉他天賦的郊區(qū)少年成長為一個受萬眾喜愛的獨立女藝術家。

Jordan, now 22, says she fielded 15 different label offers while she was still in high school. After signing with Matador and releasing Lush in 2018, she became a public figure and a magnet for parasocial attachment, drawing hordes of fans who saw themselves in her queerness and keen sensitivity. Amid this whirlpool of attention, Jordan found that her personal boundaries were too permeable; the overexposure caused enough harm to land her in rehab last year, an experience she mentions offhandedly once on Valentine. Afterwards, she handed her social media accounts to an assistant and hired a media trainer to help her deflect prying journalists. “Those parasitic cameras, don’t they stop to stare at you?” she sings over a foreboding synth in Valentine’s opening bars, pointing to the parts of success that give her pause.

如今已經22歲的Jordan，在她讀高中時就接連收到15個不同廠牌的橄欖枝。在與Matador簽約并在2018年發(fā)行《Lush》之后，她正式成為了一個公眾人物，化作準依戀型社會的一塊磁鐵，吸引了大量的粉絲，他們從她的酷兒特質和敏銳的情感體驗中看到了自己。在這種關注的漩渦中，Jordan發(fā)現她的個人界限太過易于侵透；過度曝光造成的傷害甚至讓她在去年進入康復中心，她曾在同名曲“Valentine”中不經意地提到這一經歷。之后，她選擇把她的社交媒體賬戶交付給一個助理管理，同時聘請了一個媒體助理來幫助她抵御記者的窺探?！癟hose parasitic cameras, don’t?they stop to stare at you?”她在“Valentine”的開篇伴著一個異樣合成器唱道，談到也正是所謂的成功讓她停滯不前。

But now that she has patched the holes from which her personal life seeped out into the public, her music, more than ever, functions as the release valve. The title track and lead single sounds like the inevitable eruption: Jordan blows up the chorus with an impassioned wail (“Why’d you wanna erase me, darling valentine?”) and surging guitar, her loudness proof that she will not be erased, damn it. Valentine retains the exquisite vulnerability that made Snail Mail’s first record so compelling, but Jordan’s sound is more forceful, her touchstones more varied, her writing more toned. On Lush, she explored the expressive but limited possibilities of a three-piece rock band; on Valentine, along with co-producer Brad Cook (Indigo De Souza, Waxahatchee), she flirts with pop—sharpening her hooks, reaching for the synths and strings. Where parts of Lush revealed themselves slowly, saving their secrets for intent listening, Valentine is more immediate, grabbing your gaze and refusing to let go for 32 straight minutes.

但如今，她已經修補了她個人生活中被公眾滲入的漏洞，她的音樂比以往任何時候都更能發(fā)揮解壓、釋放情緒的作用。標題曲和主打歌聽起來像是難以壓抑的情感爆發(fā)。Jordan用激昂的哀號（“Why’d you wanna erase me,darling valentine?”）、副歌中炸開了鍋的洶涌吉他以及她的響亮歌聲證明她不會被抹去?！禫alentine》保留了使Snail Mail首張唱片引人注目的精致的易碎性，但同時Jordan的聲音愈加有力，她在其中的新嘗試更加多樣，她的詞作更加調和。在《Lush》中，她開拓了三人搖滾樂隊的表現力界限，但荒地依然有限；而在《Valentine》中，她與聯合制作人Brad Cook（Indigo De Souza，Waxahatchee）一起，與流行音樂調情——銳化她的Hook，同時觸向合成器和弦樂。當《Lush》的某些部分緩慢地揭示自己，把它們的秘密暗藏尋覓心相印的聆聽時，《Valentine》更為直接，抓住你的目光，并在接下來的32分鐘內拒不撒手。

Swept up in the early-pandemic migration that sent scores of twentysomethings back to their parents’ homes, Jordan wrote much of Valentine on the floor of her childhood bedroom, the same place that she penned her early songs of longing and languishing. Now as then, love is an all-consuming force in her music, but she writes with a deeper understanding of its destructive potential and a willingness to articulate it in arresting terms. Romance and alcohol are twin toxins on Valentine, each amplifying the other’s damaging effects, each informing Jordan’s perspective on the other. “You wanna leave a stain, like a relapse does,” she sings to a ruinous former flame on “Ben Franklin.” On “Headlock,”she’s mid-bender and missing an ex, “drinking just to taste her mouth.” A wordless murmur of stacked, sighing harmonies breathes relief into the song, only to be followed by the album’s darkest material, a wrenching admission of suicidal ideation.

在早期新冠疫情的風潮中，許多20多歲的年輕人不得不回到家鄉(xiāng)、擁入老母親的懷抱，Jordan就是在她童年臥室的地板上完成了《Valentine》的大部分內容，這也是她早期寫下那些充斥著渴望和慵懶歌曲的地方?，F在和那時一樣，愛情在她的音樂中化作一種被完全消耗殆盡的力量，她在寫作時對其破壞性潛能有了更深的理解，并愿意用引人注目的術語來闡述它。對《Valentine》而言，浪漫和酒精就像是孿生毒素，他們彼此放大了彼此的破壞性影響，彼此都左右著Jordan對另者的看法?！癥ou wanna leave a stain, like a relapse does,”她在“Ben Franklin”中對一個殺千刀的前女友唱道。而在“Headlock”中，她正沉浸在對前任的思念中，唱著“drinking just to taste her mouth”。一段無言的喃喃自語、一聲無奈的嘆息和音為這首歌迎來了解脫，但緊接著便是專輯中最黑暗的部分——一個對令人心碎的自殺念頭的承認。

Valentine?takes us fearlessly to these extremes. “I have a really hard time writing from any place other than complete honesty within myself,” Jordan?said recently, noting the lasting impact of her childhood compulsion to confess. But talking about music strictly in terms of confession often erases the skill that undergirds it, particularly when that skill belongs to young women. To confess is to tell, yet conventional wisdom says it’s better to show; Jordan does both, painting vivid images and annotating them with earnest declarations. In a haze of thudding percussion and distortion on “Automate,” we find her unsteady at a party, fumbling to kiss a stranger and pretend it’s someone else. “I’ll never find another love like this,” she laments, a recurring sentiment in her music. On “Mia,” she walks us down Broadway and spots an ex preening on the way to her new partner’s apartment. “Lost love so strange,” Jordan warbles over orchestral swells, an assessment that feels profound in her gripping voice, always straining and seamed.

《Valentine》義無反顧的把我們引領到這些極端的領域。最近，Jordan在采訪中說道：“自己除了從完全的坦誠出發(fā)，真的很難從其他任何地方起筆創(chuàng)作?！彼€談到她童年時那些被強迫袒露自己的經歷難以磨滅的影響。但是，當刻意地以高要求從懺悔的角度來談論音樂時，往往會略去支撐它的技巧，特別是當這種技巧屬于年輕女性的時候。懺悔坦白就是訴說傾訴，然而傳統觀念認為付諸行動才見真心；Jordan二者兼有，既描繪出生動的圖像，又以懇切的言語為其作注。在“Automate”低沉的鼓點和失真的朦朧之中，我們能想象出她正身處一個聚會上，忐忑不安，笨拙地摸索著親吻一個陌生人，假裝那是隨便一個路人?！癐’ll never find another love like this,”她感嘆道，這也是她音樂中反復出現的情緒。在“Mia”中，她帶著我們走在百老匯大街上，在去往她新友人的公寓途中目睹一位前任在那里秀恩愛?！癓ost love so strange,”Jordan沐浴在管弦樂的旋律用顫抖的言語說道，這種體驗在她扣人心弦的聲音中尤為深刻，緊繃、令人哽咽。

Some of Valentine’s best moments come when Jordan’s textures are as bold as her emotions. “Ben Franklin” is an infectious highlight; come for the sturdy bass groove and the delicious irony of “Got money/I don’t care about sex” in the verse; stay for Jordan’s bratty delivery of “huh, honey?,” her melody doubled by wiggling synth and backed up with guest vocals from Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on the chorus. The slinky “Forever (Sailing)” brings trip-hop atmospherics to a tale of betrayal, borrowing its chorus from a 1979 song by the Swedish pop singer Madleen Kane. “Doesn’t obsession just become me?” Jordan sings knowingly here, handing down her thesis statement.

當Jordan歌聲的紋理同她的情感一樣大膽時，《Valentine》中最美好的高光時刻就出現了?！癇en Franklin”便是一個極具感染力的亮點：來聽結實的貝斯低奏和副歌中“Got money/I don’t care about sex”的俏皮諷刺；聽Jordan對“huh, honey?”的古靈闡述，她的旋律在扭動的合成器下效果加倍，并在副歌中得到Waxahatchee的Katie Crutchfield的客唱支持。悠揚的 “Forever(Sailing)”借鑒了瑞典流行歌手Madleen Kane1979年的一首歌曲，為這個關于背叛的故事帶來了短途旅行的浪漫氣氛。“Doesn’t obsession just become me?”喬丹在這里明知故問道，像是在做論文答辯。

Obsession has its upsides; resist its pull and you’ll miss delirious highs. “Light Blue,” a cozy daydream of close-mic’d acoustic guitar and glowing strings that stands apart as Valentine’s only unburdened love song, contains this tingling admission of affection: “I wanna wake up early every day/Just to be awake in the same world as you.” Though something of an outlier in both its simplicity and its sentiment, this song is a smart addition to the set—it demonstrates what’s at stake when Jordan sings about love that she’d die for.

癡迷有它的好處；而抗拒它的誘惑，你就會懷念那種譫妄的快感?！癓ight Blue”作為《Valentine》中唯一一首沒有任何負擔的情歌而獨樹一幟，由阻塞麥克風下的原聲吉他和發(fā)光的弦樂組成，講述著激動人心的愛的允諾：“I wanna wake up early every day/Just to be awake in the same worldas you.”雖然這首歌在其簡單性和情感上都算是個異類，但它同時也是這張專輯所有歌曲的一個聰明的附注——它揭示了當Jordan唱到她愿意為之獻身的愛情時的關鍵所在。

But obsession—whether you’re on the giving or receiving end—is also exhausting. On the same song, Jordan offers her partner a choice. “We can sail the ocean blue,” she sings, then gets real: “Or just lie down.” She shows a similar tendency toward rest in about half the songs on the album, most memorably on the delicate “c. et. al.”: “Even with a job that keeps me moving/Most days I just wanna lie down.” Jordan is hardly the first young star to write about the toll of her chosen path; Clairo, Jordan’s friend and an artist who is often spoken about in the same breath, did it on her own sophomore effort this year. But what’s exciting here is that fatigue has not muted Jordan or tamped her growth; instead of lying down, she shakes it off and keeps moving, chasing big sounds and big feelings. Even when she’s exhausted, Jordan is exuberant.

但是迷戀——無論你是給予還是承納的一端——都令人身心俱疲。在同一首歌中，Jordan為她的伴侶提供了一個選擇?！癢e can sail the ocean blue,”她唱道，然后回歸現實：“Or just lie down.”她在專輯中近半數的歌曲中表現出類似的躺平傾向，其中最令人難忘的是在細膩的 “c.et. al.”： “Even with a job that keeps me moving/Most days I just wanna lie down.”Jordan不是第一個寫下她所選擇道路代價的年輕一代明星；Jordan的朋友同時也是一個常被人們提及藝術家Clairo，在她自己今年的第二張錄音室專輯中也寫到類似感受。但這里令人振奮的是，疲憊并沒有使Jordan凝噎，也沒有阻礙她的成長；她沒有選擇躺平，而是甩開它，繼續(xù)前行，追逐更為宏偉的聲音和更繽紛的人生體驗。即使在她筋疲力盡的時候，Jordan也能閃充滿電來應對。