搬運自：網(wǎng)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(diào)整）

翻譯：豆目豆科

Deerhunter make a record about the joy of early music discovery, and in revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, they brilliantly rekindle it.

Deerhunter制作了一張關于年少時從音樂中尋覓歡愉的唱片，在重溫年少時光時，他們出色地用音樂重燃了這種屬于青春的熱情。

Halcyon Digest is a record about the joy of music discovery, the thrill of listening for the first time to a potential future favorite, and that sense of boundless possibility when you're still innocent of indie-mainstream politics and your personal canon is far from set. In revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, Deerhunter brilliantly rekindle it, and the result meets Microcastle/Weird Era (Cont.) as the band's most exhilarating work to date. Whether those halcyon days were real or just idealized doesn't matter. With producer Ben Allen, who lent a bass-heavy sheen to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, these four guys-- lead singer Bradford Cox, singer/guitarist Lockett Pundt, bass player Josh Fauver, and drummer Moses Archuleta-- have created a seamless album of startling emotional clarity.

《Halcyon Digest》是一張關于年少時從音樂中尋覓歡愉的唱片，描繪的是人們第一次聆聽在不久的將來會付諸熱愛的音樂時的激動情緒；是對當你對獨立音樂尚一知半解，音樂的舒適圈尚未定型時那種無限可能的追憶。在重溫那段年少時光時，Deerhunter出色地重燃起其中焰火，最終是與《Microcastle》《Weird Era Cont.》的碰撞，成為樂隊迄今為止最振奮人心的作品。而那些光輝往日存在于真實世界還是理想世界也似乎不再重要。制作人Ben Allen曾賦予Animal Collective的《Merriweather Post Pavilion》以厚重的低音光澤；而樂隊四人——主唱Bradford Cox、人聲/吉他手Lockett Pundt、貝斯手Josh Fauver和鼓手Moses Archuleta——共同創(chuàng)造了一張情感表達清晰無比、堪稱無瑕的專輯。

Deerhunter have never lacked ambition. 2007 breakout Cryptograms came as two discrete halves: one front-loaded with ambient drifts and clanging post-punk aggression, the other blasting off into sunny psych-pop. Microcastle turned out to be a sprawling, ghostly amusement park of a double album, with violence and frail beauty never far from each other. And then there are all those EPs, side projects, and rarities. In blog posts and interviews, Cox has shown himself to be a music lover of the highest order, almost a platonic ideal of the artist as fan.

Deerhunter從不缺乏野心。2007年的突破性作品《Cryptograms》擁有兩個獨立特質(zhì)：一個是表層的氛圍漂移假象以及其背后的鏗鏘、侵略性十足的后朋，另一個是爆炸性突變而成的陽光迷幻流行。到了《Microcastle》則變成了一張龐大的、幽靈般的雙專輯主題游樂園，暴力之美同脆弱之美相互交融、難舍難分。隨后還有所有這些EP、“副產(chǎn)品”和“稀有產(chǎn)品”我們都可以從中略窺端倪。在幾篇博客文章和采訪文稿中，Cox已經(jīng)略微透露出他是一個頂級音樂愛好者，幾乎是藝術家們的柏拉圖式的理想粉絲。

This record marks a distinctly different approach for the band, more streamlined and stripped down, and in its sparest moments, it echoes the stark intimacy and one-take effortlessness of records like Neil Young's Tonight's the Night or Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos. Fans of the band's earlier stuff may understandably miss some of the old electric-guitar squall, but Halcyon Digest's expanded instrumental palette-- acoustic guitar, electronic percussion, banjo, autoharp, harmonica, vocal harmonies, and saxophone (!)-- creates endless depths of intricacy and nuance to explore in headphones.

這張唱片標志著樂隊走上一條截然不同的道路，變得愈加精練、脫胎換骨；在最平靜的間隙，它呼應著Neil Young的《Tonight's the Night》或Chris Bell的《I Am the Cosmos》等唱片中的那種鮮明的親昵相依和一蹴而就的風格。鐘愛樂隊早期作品的粉絲可能會懷念那些老式電吉他的聲音，但《Halcyon Digest》無疑擴展了樂隊器樂的調(diào)色板——原聲吉他、電子打擊樂、班卓琴、自鳴琴、口琴、人聲和聲以及薩克斯管(!)——在耳機中創(chuàng)造了無限精妙繁密的細節(jié)。

In the past, Deerhunter's gift for garbled sonics and Cox's stream-of-consciousness methods made it easy to downplay the group's lyrical ability. That's not the case here. Whether by Pundt, who sings lead on two of Halcyon Digest's best songs, or Cox, Deerhunter's songwriting congeals into a style all its own, with lyrics moved front-and-center. The words fit perfectly together, down to the most trivial minutia: Cox asking, "Did you stick with me?" at the start of garage-pop fist-pumper "Memory Boy", right after the track people are most likely to skip (funny!), or Pundt mentioning a "marching band" on another uptempo proto-anthem, "Fountain Stairs", as Bill Oglesby's sax first appears.

過去，Deerhunter對聲波的失真處理天賦和Cox的意識流表達方式使得人們很容易忽視這個團體的抒情能力。但如今的情況已大不相同，無論是由Pundt（他在《Halcyon Digest》最好的兩首歌曲中擔任主唱）還是Cox，Deerhunter的詞曲創(chuàng)作都凝結成一種自己的獨特風格。歌詞被置于首要且核心的位置，這些詞完美地結合在一起，刻畫著一些最微不足道的細節(jié)：Cox在車庫流行曲“Memory Boy”的開頭問道“Did you stick with me?”就在人們最可能忽略的曲目之后（有趣?。?；或是Pundt在另一首快節(jié)奏的前奏曲“Fountain Stairs”中提到的“marching band”，也是在這，Bill Oglesby的薩克斯第一次出現(xiàn)在他們的音樂中。

The topical ground covered here is inspired, too: "Revival", a sort of Southern gothic folk-rock baptism, embraces religion. "I'm saved, I'm saved!" Cox exalts, "I felt his presence heal me." Recorded to four-track, "Basement Scene" "dream[s] a little dream" that soon turns nightmarish: "I don't wanna get old" quickly becomes "I wanna get old" as Cox weighs the alternative. And first single "Helicopter" is a beautifully watery electro-acoustic farewell that uses a tragic Dennis Cooper story about a Russian prostitute (graciously reprinted in the liner notes) to support its emotional bleakness.

專輯里歌曲涵蓋的主題也很有靈氣：“Revival”，像受到一種南哥特式民謠搖滾的洗禮，擁抱宗教。“I'm saved, I'm saved!” Cox得意地慨嘆道，“I felt his presence heal me.”；在“Basement Scene”中，最初的“夢，再小夢片刻”的流連忘返，很快變作噩夢：在權衡多種抉擇后，Cox心中所想自“I don't wanna get old”很快演變成“I wanna get old”。專輯的第一首單曲“Helicopter”是一個悠揚的水聲電波告別曲，引用了Dennis Cooper筆下一個關于俄羅斯妓女的悲慘故事（唱片內(nèi)頁附贈有這篇故事），借以支撐詞曲所要傳達的陰郁、黯淡。

Then there's seven-and-a-half-minute finale "He Would Have Laughed", dedicated to Jay Reatard, the Memphis garage rocker who died last winter of drug-related causes at age 29. Its lyrics are the most cryptic on Halcyon Digest-- full sentences are rarely formed before Cox closes them off with his usual crisp consonants. A simple acoustic guitar riff repeats as other percussion elements and electronic tones pan across the track, occasionally joined by the full band. Cox admits to growing "bored as I get older," and then goes into a dream-- "I lived on a farm, yeah/ I never lived on a farm"-- until he finally all but asks, "Where are your friends tonight?" The track cuts off unexpectedly mid-note.

然后是長達七分半的壓軸曲“He Would Have Laughed”，獻給去年冬天死于毒品相關原因的孟菲斯車庫搖滾歌手Jay Reatard，享年僅29歲。它的歌詞是《Halcyon Digest》所有歌曲中最隱晦的——在Cox用他一貫的清脆輔音結束之前，都沒有幾個完整的句子。一個簡易的原聲吉他riff重復著，打擊樂和電子音效等等其他元素在這首曲子中接連泛起，偶有整個樂隊一齊發(fā)聲。Cox坦誠著“bored as I get older”，隨后遁入夢境——“I lived on a farm, yeah/ I never lived on a farm”——直到他最后幾乎質(zhì)問道：“Where are your friends tonight?”“Where do they see you?”“What did you want to be?”便意外地在音符間隙中斷了。

Deerhunter unveiled their new album by asking fans to print out a vintage DIY-style poster, photocopy it, and tape it up all over town. In the last couple of weeks, band members have participated in all-night online chats with some of their most devoted fans. We'll never be able to parse every lyric or tease out every technical intricacy-- though somebody will probably try-- but that is what Halcyon Digest is all about: nostalgia not for an era, not for antiquated technology, but for a feeling of excitement, of connection, of that dumb obsession that makes life worth living no matter how horrible it gets. And then sharing that feeling with somebody else who'll start the cycle all over again.

Deerhunter要求歌迷們打印這張復古DIY風格的海報，復印數(shù)張、貼滿全城的大街小巷來，以此揭開他們新專輯的面紗。在過去的幾周里，樂隊成員們參與了同他們最忠實的歌迷的通宵在線聊天。我們永遠無法解析每一句歌詞，也無法找出每一個復雜技術問題的標準答案——盡管可能有人會嘗試——但這就是《Halcyon Digest》的全部內(nèi)容：不是對一個時代、一個過時技藝的懷舊，而是對一種悸動、一種聯(lián)結的感覺，一種無論生活會變得多么可怕也值得奔赴的愚蠢的癡迷。然后與其他人分享這種感覺，他們將重啟這一循環(huán)。