Pitchfork Review中文拙译：Yo La Tengo-I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One

by Marc Hogan

Senior Staff Writer

Rock

October 29 2017

Twenty years on from its original release, Yo La Tengo’s finest album still sparkles with wit and charm, an album so cozy you forget about its musical eclecticism.

时隔二十年，这张Yo La Tengo的最佳作品凭借着它的哲思启迪和人性之美仍闪耀着无上光辉，并让听者在惬意的氛围下忘却它的折中主义。

An easy way to break the ice when meeting a new couple is to ask them how they met. Sometimes there’s no story; more often these days, they met through an online dating website. But now and then the answer is revelatory. Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley were formally introduced on America’s Independence Day weekend. It was 1980, and the Feelies, New Jersey’s own nervy new wavers, were playing at Maxwell’s, a bar that had opened a couple of years earlier in Hoboken. The curly-haired rock critic from New York City’s northern suburbs and the art-schooled daughter of an Oscar-winning animation duo on Manhattan’s Upper West Side shared a passion for music. Within months, they were in a close relationship, and they started playing together, Ira on guitar, Georgia on drums. By 1984, they’d formed Yo La Tengo, putting out several respectable albums of Flying Nun- and Velvet Underground-minded college rock with a rotating array of bassists. But it wasn’t until they brought on a former Virginia college radio DJ named James McNew that these Hoboken-anchored Maxwell’s regulars moved from channeling their record collection to advancing on it.

遇上新婚夫妇一个打破沉默僵局的办法就是去询问他们初次邂逅时的情形。虽然有时两人的初见并没有什么让人乐道的浪漫故事，尤其是在当代社会，很多年轻人都是通过社交网络坠入爱河，可是提问者偶尔还是能得到具有启示意义的精彩回复。Ira Kaplan和Georgia Hubley是在1980年的美国独立日周末相遇的。那是在霍博肯城一个开了有些年头的名叫“Maxwell’s”的酒吧，The Feelies，这支新泽西州的新浪潮乐队正在酒吧里表演。这时，一个来自纽约城北郊的卷发摇滚乐评人和一个来自曼哈顿上西区的出生于荣获奥斯卡奖的动画制作家庭的文艺女青年正激动地交流着彼此对音乐的热忱。短短几个月，他们便发展成了亲密的关系，并开始一起玩音乐。Ira负责吉他，Georgia担任鼓手。到了1984年，他们组建了Yo La Tengo，随后陆续发行了几张口碑极佳的具有地下丝绒遗风的学院派摇滚专辑，尽管期间贝斯手的位置几经更迭。于是直到他们招揽进一位名叫James Mcnew的前弗吉尼亚大学电台DJ负责贝斯演奏时这对被“Maxwell’s”酒吧“养育多年”的鸳鸯眷侣才停下了精选的收录工作而开始全新专辑的创作。

The 1993 album Painful was Yo La Tengo’s first breakthrough, a whispery feedback-streak opus that stood as a worthy riposte to British shoegaze; Electr-O-Pura, two years later, sounded more spartan but boasted career-highlight songs like “Blue Line Swinger.” While those two records solidified Yo La Tengo as one of the best bands in a competitive indie rock landscape, 1997’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One was their first true masterpiece. More than a dozen years into get-in-the-van touring life, here was a band not only expanding the boundaries of American garage rock, but exploding them. But for all its stylistic eclecticism, the record also sensitively traces the outlines of intimacy, both musical and romantic, hinting at a new way to imagine a life in music, one that still resonates 20 years on.

于1993年发行的专辑Painful是Yo La Tengo的第一次重大突破。这张充斥着吉他回授（Feedback）效果和呢喃人声的作品对于当时气焰正盛的英伦盯鞋风无疑是个有力的回敬。两年后的Electr-O-Pura虽然听感较为粗糙却贡献出例如“Blue Line Swinger”这样的生涯最佳。即便这两张专辑已经能够让Yo La Tengo在风起云涌的独立摇滚界跻身最佳乐队之一，1997年推出的I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One才算是他们第一张真正意义上的杰作。在这十余年栉风沐雨的巡演人生里，Yo La Tengo对于美国车库摇滚的界限，既在不断延拓，更在淡化抹除。但他们风格上的折中主义又令这张专辑秉承下他们一贯坚持的音乐性与浪漫性的私密化宗旨，从而缔造出一种二十年来经久不衰，在音乐中抒写人生的全新方式。

Yo La Tengo had always had the covers repertoire of a jukebox, and here they channeled that into their own songwriting. The love-buzzed guitar swirl Painful still had its power, as evidenced by the perfect squall of a track like “Deeper Into Movies.” But their wry bossa nova on romantic duet “Center of Gravity,” the alt-country lilt on pedal-steel weeper “One PM Again,” and aching jazz-pop balladry with the Hubley-led “Shadows” were just as masterful. Steel-guitar instrumental “Green Arrow” wrought cinematic expanses out of cricket chirps and off-kilter percussion. And a band that a decade ago cut a harmonica-tinged jangler called “3 Blocks From Groove St.” happily found that rhythmic destination in the Stereolab-locked psych loops of “Moby Octopad,” which also managed to sample an obscure Burt Bacharach track.

Yo La Tengo总是善于将他们从点唱机听到的歌曲作为原材料进行加工再创造。就拿“Deeper Into Movies”这首噪音运用可谓完美的作品来说，这种在吉他嗡嗡声中绵延生长的无限爱意在他们的前作Painful里就已显露无余。可波萨诺瓦风格的浪漫二重唱“Center of Gravity”，应用踏板吉他的alt-country轻松小调“One PM Again”，还有由Hubley献唱的带有jazz-pop风的伤感芭乐“Shadows”同样堪称佳作。“Green Arrow”的夏威夷吉他在蟋蟀的窸窣和支离的鼓点中轻易勾勒出电影原声的意境。而“Moby Octopad”里无限循环的Stereolab式迷幻音墙则可看作是十年前他们做出的一首微带口琴音效的歌曲“3 Blocks From Groove St”节奏的终极进化。同时这首歌还采样了些许钢琴家Burt Bacharach的作曲片段。

Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield has written that Kaplan and Hubley “[do] for marriage what the Velvet Underground did for heroin,” and there’s something to the love-is-the-drug comparison. “When the smack begins to flow/I really don’t care anymore,” Lou Reed sang on the Velvets track, one where he infamously called the opiate both his life and his wife. Yo La Tengo also seek escape, talking of love as their place to hide from the outside world. “Locked in a kiss, outside eyes cease to exist,” they sing in the first words we hear on I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. The feedback-stained “Damage” could be a shuffling tone poem reminiscent of Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk, except for Kaplan’s soft speak-singing: “I used to think about you all the time/I would think about you all the time/Now it just feels weird that there you are,” he murmurs. What was once routine can be made privately uncanny through time shared together. It’s something outside eyes can’t see. They don’t even exist.

滚石杂志的编辑Rob Sheffield曾这样评论Kaplan和Hubley对婚姻或爱情的刻画：就好比地下丝绒是如何在歌中描述海洛因的，Yo La Tengo歌中的爱情和Lou Reed笔下的毒品二者之间其实有着异曲同工之妙。“当海洛因的药效开始在身体里四处涌动，我对这个丑恶的世界就此无牵无挂。”（smack在俚语中为海洛因的代指）Lou Reed在其歌曲“Heroin”中这样唱道，并将毒品唤作他的生命和爱人。Yo La Tengo同样把爱情视为逃离尘世的一个手段。在I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One 中听到的第一句歌词便是：“你我相吻之时，外人的一切目光都将不复存在。” 带有回授音效的“Damage”是一首慢速情诗，像是唤醒了酒吧里与暗恋对象打了个猝不及防照面的尴尬回忆。Kaplan在歌中喃喃自语：“我无时无刻不想念你，我每时每刻都想念你，可你的突然出现却让我措手不及。”未做任何心理准备遇见朝思暮想的心上人，竟成了一道不堪回首的伤痛。这确实是只有当事人才能体会的“外人的目光看不到，就像他们不复存在”的事情。

That same inscrutable intimacy is all over the album’s most groove-driven—and most seductive—track, the indie-mixtape classic “Autumn Sweater.” When Kaplan gently describes a knock at the door, and how “We could slip away/Wouldn’t that be better,” as an organ peals over hiccuping polyrhythms, he might be portraying a bashful pair going on a date. But the critic Jon Dolan, writing about I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One in 1997, heard a lover contemplating an affair, his partner’s steady beat reminding him that “it’s a waste of time.” Or it might be a drearily autobiographical tune about Kaplan and Hubley having to go to some boring function after Labor Day, and we’re all reimagining it as somehow sensual and profound. Whatever the specific reference, the song itself is quintessentially cozy, capturing the feeling where the days are growing shorter and it’s time to move inside.

像这种只可意会不可言传的暧昧关系在专辑里最具律动感和吸引力的阴地经典“Autumn Sweater”中体现得尤为明显。Kaplan先是描绘了一个敲门场景，伴着跃动的复合节奏和穿插其中的风琴，随后他开始犹豫和后悔：“我们本应悄悄溜走，这样做也许更合适。”或许这首歌讲述的是一对想去邀约却又羞于启齿的腼腆恋人。但是一位名叫Jon Dolan的乐评人在1997年撰写这张专辑的评论时无意间听说某个蓄势待发的情夫正等着其情人做出最后的决断，而情人优哉游哉的态度让他联想到了歌词中“it’s a waste of time”这句话。也有可能这首歌讲的不过是歌手自己的无聊日常：Kaplan和Hubley在劳动节后参加了一个无聊的社交集会，只是我们把它想的太复杂了。抛开这些乱七八糟的猜测，这首听上去极为惬意的歌的确能触及你内心深处对时光流逝的惋惜与惆怅。

The album’s title also describes a group of musicians working closely in sync. Throughout, under the Nashville tutelage of longtime producer Roger Moutenot, the band seems to have established its own innate communication. They’ve been doing it enough to make it look easy. Their cover-band roots return on “Little Honda,” which gets under the hood of the Brian Wilson original and corrodes it with chugging distortion; it wasn’t necessarily supposed to be on the album, McNew has said, but “it just sort of turned out pretty good.” And McNew, who has also long made endearingly shambling indie-pop under the goofy misnomer Dump, he had his first Yo La Tengo lead vocal on “Stockholm Syndrome,” and earns it with high and lonesome folk-skronk that’s like a missing evolutionary link between Neil Young and Whitney. The penultimate track, “We’re an American Band,” is not a cover; its six-odd minutes of whispery harmonies and smoldering shrillness offer a very different idea than Grand Funk Railroad’s of what that title phrase means. It’s a bittersweet elegy for a life on the road, of Monday matinees and playing in Southern college towns where Cracked Rear View is the pre-show house music. It’s an idea that was already turning into a throwback in its own time, as the major labels’ slash-and-burn approach to the U.S. indie underground left a denuded cultural landscape. But in the elegant sprawl of Yo La Tengo’s rendering, it all sounds like a dream nonetheless.

专辑的标题名暗示着这是一张数人通力打造的合力之作。在纳什维尔制作人Roger Moutenot长期的帮助下乐队终于建立起了彼此间的默契，事实上他们一直以来都在不断磨合这份默契。和往常一样他们在作品中收录了一首翻唱歌曲“Little Honda”，并用密集的吉他失真侵蚀了Brian Wilson原版的轻快与甜蜜。最初他们并没打算将这首歌收录于专辑，但是贝斯手McNew说它听起来确实不错。McNew也曾组建过自己的乐队“Dump”，长久以来制作的却都是些呆滞的indie pop。然而这回他因在“Stockholm Syndrome”中负责主唱大显身手了一次。这首喜忧参半的歌曲带有的民谣质感像是打破了Neil Young和Whitney之间的划界。倒数第二支曲目“We’re an American Band”并非对Grand Funk Railroad同名曲的翻唱，长达六分多钟的呢喃和尖锐刺耳的噪音呈现出的是完全不同于Grand Funk Railroad版的思想情感。这是一首在奔赴周一音乐会演出的公路上写的带着自嘲意味的人生哀歌，虽然汽车故障不过好在这个南方城镇的大学电台播放的暖场歌曲是他们最爱的Hootie & the Blowfish 歌曲“Cracked Rear View”。尽管放在当时的时代背景下或许能更好地理解这首歌：三大厂牌的压制让那时的美国独立与地下音乐的发展处于水生火热中，可是Yo La Tengo精彩的演绎却让其听上去仅仅像是惊魂一梦罢了。

In the story of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, the other key relationship, beyond Kaplan-Hubley, and beyond Kaplan-Hubley-McNew, is between the musicians and their fans. The winking title of melodious instrumental opener “Return to Hot Chicken” is an inside joke not only for the band, but also for those who follow them (“hot chicken” had been referenced in earlier song titles). Along with “Autumn Sweater,” the record’s other unassailable landmark is “Sugarcube,” a fuzzed-out singalong that’s some of the finest American noise-pop of its era. The song’s video, Yo La Tengo’s last for more than a decade, features “Mr. Show’”s David Cross and Bob Odenkirk and a pre-Jack Black school of rock. The band’s members are cast as down-to-earth underdogs who’ll bow a guitar if you ask them to but don’t really see the point of stadium-rock theatricality. If they had “cred,” it was because they were credible—because they, as fans first too, knew their own capacity to suspend disbelief about industry pomp. They knew how fragile their idealistic outlook could be, too: “I crumble like a sugarcube for you,” Kaplan insisted.

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One的制作故事不仅仅存在于乐队三人之间，歌迷带给他们的启发同样不容忽视。旋律美妙的纯乐器开场曲“Return to Hot Chicken”其实暗含着一个小彩蛋：“hot chicken”是Yo La Tengo专门为粉丝起的爱称（前作Electr-o-pura的两首歌名后注有“hot chicken”的副标题）。充满FUZZ音效的“Sugarcube”代表着当时美国noise-pop的最高水准，和“Autumn Sweater”并列为专辑的高光时刻。歌曲MV场景设定在一个类似于曾由Jack Black主演的“摇滚校园”里。 “Mr. Show”的主持人David Cross和Bob Odenkirk也在里面友情出演。在MV中，受公司安排前去摇滚学院进修的乐队成员对老师惟命是从，以致于尽管并不十分明白何谓stadium-rock应具有的戏剧性与夸张性，在被要求学用琴弓拉奏吉他时他们还是乖乖照做。正如Yo La Tengo从不辜负歌迷的信赖（credible），老师眼中的差生一步步进化为学分（cred）满贯的毕业生代表，并在MV的末尾处备受公司上级的肯定。同是乐迷的他们知道，只有保持并保证作品的质量，歌迷对音乐人的信任和对乐坛的期待才会永不停息。即便他们同样深谙理想与憧憬会是多么脆弱，就像Kaplan在歌中唱的“你要从方糖中榨出血滴，我宁愿自己化作方糖任你折磨。”（为满足恋人太过无理的“理想”，在做完一切徒劳后Kaplan终于“崩溃成”糖块。也暗示着这段恋情本身也是徒劳）

Yo La Tengo may not have bought into their own hype, but by this point in their career, it was considerable. SPIN, CMJ, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly all bestowed I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One with rave reviews. It cracked No. 5 on the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop critics’ poll, still the band’s highest placement, and has ranked high on 1990s best-albums lists, Pitchfork’s among them. I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is not, in other words, an album that obviously screams out for a critical reassessment. But beyond its music, which has lost none of its luster, the album also captures a moment in time, and points to creative ideals that still matter.

Yo La Tengo不会为他们的作品公关炒作，即便如此这张专辑仍然获得了评论界的一致好评，SPIN, CMJ, Rolling Stone还有Entertainment Weekly都给予了它极高的赞誉。在乡村之声的Pazz & Jop年终乐评人投票上I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One位列第五，目前仍是Yo La Tengo在这一榜单上的最佳成绩。在Pitchfork列出的1990s专辑排名上这张专辑同样位居前列。换而言之，I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One无需重评或翻案。多年过去，这张时代的经典其价值没有一丝一毫的褪色，而是不断地为后世音乐人提供不竭的灵感与创意。

Over the past 20 years, Yo La Tengo have kept releasing good-to-great albums, from their more nakedly love-themed And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out in 2000 to 2015’s Stuff Like That There, a covers-based callback to the band’s pre-Matador album Fakebook. They’ve scored films, they’ve backed Yoko Ono. They’ve even performed Grand Funk’s “We’re an American Band”—after all, Yo La Tengo were born on the Fourth of July, remember? In short, by trying just about everything but never forgetting who their fans are they’ve pursued the insular yet alluring worldview that I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One epitomized. When Yo La Tengo are cited as an influence these days, it often seems to be by bands that are directly channeling the ’90s, but their human-scale approach to being in love and being in a band while making their way through the music industry machinery. Yo La Tengo never really were about mainstream success. What they were about may be summed up in the album’s finale, yet another cover, this time of a mid-century MOR staple.

在过去的二十年里，Yo La Tengo从未停止专辑的创作和发行。从2000年纯爱主题的And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out到2015年效仿他们早期未签约Matador时期推出的Fakebook以“翻唱为主，原创为辅”概念模式的Stuff Like That There，皆收获了不错的评价。在此期间他们拍摄过电影，与小野洋子合作过，他们甚至还表演过Grand Funk的“We’re an American Band”——毕竟你应该还记得，Yo La Tengo诞生于独立日。总之，Yo La Tengo从来都没有忘记粉丝对他们的期待，因而尝试着一切偏门却诱人的事物，这也正是I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One想要传达的人生哲理。如今Yo La Tengo的乐坛影响力不言而喻，可很多人认为这是因为九十年代乐队本身就在电台播放上占据先天优势。其实不然，Yo La Tengo之所以能在乐坛开辟出一片天地，全是由于他们对待爱情，对待音乐，对待乐队伙伴的人性化态度和理念。事实是Yo La Tengo从未真正取得主流层面上的成功。若用一首歌形容他们，专辑的结尾曲或许再合适不过，即使这又是一首上世纪中叶的歌曲翻唱。

Once recorded by singer Anita Bryant (later known more for her ugly anti-gay activism), “My Little Corner of the World” now belongs to Yo La Tengo so indelibly that “Gilmore Girls,” when misguidedly denied permission to use the band’s version, closely replicated it for a song in the pilot episode (Yo La Tengo later performed on the show—McNew was a fan). In the knowingly naive mold of Moe Tucker on VU’s “After Hours,” it’s an invitation from Hubley to a lover, to a band, to a specific audience: “I always knew that I’d find someone like you,” she asserts. Their little corner of the world may have since acquired a dust bunny or two, a couple of chips in the paint. But this couple, this band, seems to understand, with Leonard Cohen, that there’s a crack in everything, because that’s where the light gets in. How some people met may be a good conversation-starter. How their hearts began to beat in time is between them. And where they want to go from there, Yo La Tengo remind us, is a back-and-forth that can fill a life.

尽管原唱为Anita Bryant（更为大众熟知的是这位歌手臭名昭著的反同思想），“My Little Corner of the World”是专属Yo La Tengo的歌曲似乎成了一件顺理成章的事。《吉尔莫女孩》，这部家庭伦理剧在被错误地告知无权引用这首歌的Yo La Tengo版后竟不惜竭力复刻这首歌以安插在试播集中（Yo La Tengo之后客串了这部电视剧，McNew是这部剧的粉丝）。像是模仿地下丝绒的鼓手Moe Tucker在“After Hours”中故作天真的唱腔，Hubley在歌中唱道：“我一直知道我会找到像你这样的人。”仿佛是Hubley向爱人，向乐队，或是向某一特定听众发出的邀请。也许他们的小角落徒生灰尘，也许他们的小角落壁画破损，但Yo La Tengo应能明白Leonard Cohen的一句名言：“万物皆有裂缝，因为那是光芒照进的地方。”问及一对佳人的初次相遇不失为一个好的破冰话题，然而二人是如何由一见倾心到情投意合，这其间的来龙去脉，还是留给他们自己作为彼此的秘密吧。至于今后的路会是怎样，Yo La Tengo告诉我们，分合起落的不确定性方能铸就人生之美。

原文地址：https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yo-la-tengo-i-can-hear-the-heart-beating-as-one/

译文仅供参考，由于水平有限，不足之处欢迎指正。