另附个人的P4K满分乐评翻译

重在自我学习，但无妨博大家一笑，还请多多指教。

Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound, a wild symphony of the everyday, an unyielding masterpiece. No music has ever sounded quite like it.

“对Fiona Apple(下称Apple）而言，这是她的第五张专辑，更是一曲记录了生活的奔放的交响乐，是绝对的杰作。从来没有音乐如此般。” 来自Pitchfork, 10 / 10 Best New Music, 4/17/2020

It happens to most of us at an early age: the realization that life will not follow a straight line on the path towards fulfillment. Instead, life spirals. The game is rigged, power corrupts, and society is, in a word, bullshit. Art can expose the lies. The early music of Fiona Apple was so much about grand betrayals by inadequate men and the patriarchal world. Did it teach you to hate yourself? Did it teach you to bury your pain, to let it calcify, to build a gate around your heart that quiets the reaches of your one and only voice? Fetch the bolt cutters.

有一个道理我们很早就能领悟：生活一定会把你往死里玩，何时不会被玩死，何时就完成了自我实现。社会是操蛋的，但这话又不能老是明说，于是艺术应运而生。这么说来，Apple确是出色的艺术家——她几乎没浪费过把对渣男们和男权社会的抨击，转化为精彩作品的机会。但是否，在为这些抨击产生共鸣的人，开始憎恨着自己？是否，伤痛只是埋起来遮一遮、钙化下换换装，实则粗暴地戒断了真我的表达？那么，赶紧拿起（心门的）断线钳吧。

Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound. No music has ever sounded quite like it. Apple recorded Fetch the Bolt Cutters both in and with her Venice Beach home, banging on its walls, stomping on its ground. Self-reliance is its rule, curiosity is its key. Fetch the Bolt Cutters seems to almost completely turn the volume down on music history, while it cranks up raw, real life—handclaps, chants, and other makeshift percussion, in harmony with space, echoes, whispers, screams, breathing, jokes, so-called mistakes, and dog barks. (At least five dogs are credited: Mercy, Maddie, Leo, Little, and Alfie.) All of this debris orbits around the core of Apple’s music: her voice, her piano, and most of all her words, which have always been her primary instrument. It creates a wild symphony of the everyday.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters(下称FtBC)在Apple位于威尼斯海滩的家中录制完成，在聆听的时候，仿佛能看到独自踱步、若有所思而叩着墙的Apple。独立判断和好奇尝试成效可观：FtBC对声乐内容的表现作了大幅弱化，展现出的是赤裸真实的生活元素——拍手、念诵、随手取用的打击乐器，低语、尖叫、立 大 功 汪 汪 队（Mercy, Maddie, Leo, Little和Alfie），笑闹、回音、似是而非的制作瑕疵···它们在时空间上和谐共处，细散但簇拥着作为作品核心的Apple的声音、钢琴，以及每一词每一句。这是一部奔放的交响曲，它源于生活，但史无前例。

In the past, Apple has said John Lennon was her god, and she wrote lyrics and melodies on par with the finest pop songs ever recorded. But Fetch the Bolt Cutters feels more conceptually akin to the revolutionary risk-taking of saint Yoko Ono—a woman who once wrote, “I like to fight the establishment by using methods that are so far removed from establishment-type thinking that the establishment doesn’t know how to fight back.” Fetch the Bolt Cutters does something similar. It contains practically no conventional pop forms. Taken together, the notes of its found percussion and rattling blues are liberationist.

就仿佛约翰列侬先生确实是心中的另一位耶稣，Apple过往的作词作曲无不是一次次令人肃然起敬的朝圣，大多为流行作品的标杆。不过，就FtBC那不走寻常Pop路线的风格而言，Apple的耶稣更像是“以反权威制胜权威”的小野洋子老师(夫 妻 圈 粉 计 划 通)，专辑中的打击乐和蓝调乐都有自由主义的气息。

Apple was moving towards all of this with 2012’s The Idler Wheel. Even after the fury and eloquence of her initial three-album run—manifestos from a voice of disenchantment who knew even as a teenager that she was “too smart” for the world—Idler Wheel still felt like a breakthrough. It was the first Apple record to realize the breadth of her potential in the ecstatic reach of the music itself. On the corporeal “Daredevil,” she sang of “gashes” that gave her “lift.” But on Fetch the Bolt Cutters she calls the gashes out by name: “bullies,” “it girls,” “wannabes,” and, above all, toxic masculinity.

其实这耶稣一个变俩也不是一天两天了。尽管强势怒放的最初三部曲堪称宣布了Apple“承受着当时那个年龄不该有的牛逼”，Idler Wheel依然新意满满，也应是从那时起，Apple充分认识到自己深耕于真正的音乐的潜力。于是，在旧作“Daredevil”中那些她提及让自己蜕变的伤口，现在被自信地悉数暴露——被粗暴对待、物质女孩和名利至上信条，以及一贯以来她最憎恶的、荼毒人心的大男子主义。

Apple said, in a recent profile in The New Yorker, that she worried she’d constructed “a record that can’t be made into a record,” but that shakiness was merely a symptom of a feat of total abandon. The whole album flies. The opening song, “I Want You to Love Me” seems to offer a thesis for the meaning of life: to love, to connect, to get “back in the pulse.” She sings, scats, lightly raps—and proceeds to curl her voice into an extended-vocal contortion à la Yoko or Meredith Monk, over a Reichian piano loop, signaling an avant-garde inclination. Apple sings about time and meaninglessness, and how “while I’m in this body I want somebody to want.” She sings about knowing that one day she will die. The song echoes the beautiful open letter she wrote in 2012 about her dog, Janet, who was then dying: “I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her in the last moments.” Apple reportedly “tapped” on a box containing Janet’s bones during the recording of the album.

天欲降大作于是人也，必定让ta怕到不敢发，幸亏在最近的一期《纽约客》里，Apple没有让类似的这番担心任意发展。

整张作品，堪称轻盈如飞。开幕的“I Want You to Love Me”中，Apple呼吁着听众去爱，去与人联结，去找回活力。她欢唱着、絮叨着，时而还用一点拟声(scat, 应当是爵士乐技法)。在仿佛宣示着前卫大潮的莱克式钢琴伴奏中，她出彩地扭卷自己的声音，技艺高如洋子老师和梅芮迪斯。

这首歌是Apple一边轻敲着死去的爱狗Janet的遗骨盒录制而成的，8年前，Apple为它的离开写过一封凄美的公开信：“你在我的脑海中将会更加挥之不去、无法忘却···直到我也追随你而去。” 想必唱到的时光和浮生、“我欲为我，那被人需要的存在”的主张，还有终将逝去的领悟，都在遥相呼应Janet的逝去吧。

There is a tendency among songwriters, as they get older, to refine—to use fewer words to allow for easier melodies. But to refine is to reel back, to withdraw. Apple does the opposite, reimagining her music to accommodate even more words, more of herself: “You’ve got to get what you want/How you want it/But so do I,” she sings on “Drumset,” grasping at every self-determined syllable. A number of Fetch the Bolt Cutters’ rough-hewn tracks sound like they might collapse at any moment, only to pick themselves up with a smirk of cool relief. The incantatory “Relay” includes a fluttering ambient noise jam recalling no one so much as O.G. punk band the Slits. Across four distinct movements, the madcap “For Her” pivots from a cabaret tune to a march to a swooping blues ballad to a one-woman choir of antagonizing angels. It is the definition of uncompromising. Apple’s indictments of men are also cutting as ever—“Your face ignites a fuse to my patience,” goes “Cosmonauts”—but her vulnerabilities are more daring, too. In a single word, her voice can dive from a ragged scream to a whisper so intimate that it barely exists outside of her.

时光往往斑驳了歌手的人生，而凝练ta们的创作。为此往往会经历一次次的记忆回溯，而Apple选择以更夯实的文词诠释自己与作品。

“Drumset”一曲中，每个字音都咬得清晰坚定：“你很有野心，但你有多有野心呢？我也是如此的。”此般大刀阔斧在FtBC中无所谓过犹不及地出现了数次，且这之中仿佛能窥见一个暗中偷税的Apple。

全专念咒担当“Relay”中那颤变的氛围音噪，善于这手笔的非朋克乐团the Slits莫属，而“For Her”一曲更以卡巴莱旋律到蓝调民谣，再过渡到会触怒天使的单人唱诗，定义了独属于它的光怪陆离和毫不妥协。

当然，对厌恶的男性的控诉一如既往地凛冽，瞧瞧“Cosmonauts”这句歌词：“如果要点爆我的耐心，你的碧莲就是天下第一的火引子”，不过这首作品中的Apple，也呈现了脆弱的自己。

Fetch the Bolt Cutters can threaten the status quo and it can be outrageously funny, often at once. The long-reigning queen of self-isolation proclaims, “I told you I didn’t want to go to this dinner,” to open a song called “Under the Table,” as in: “Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up.” “Rack of His” turns the experience of, well, getting played by a musician, into something hysterically subversive: “Check out that rack of his/Look at that row of guitar necks,” she daydreams, before cutting to the quick: “I thought you would wail on me like you wail on them.” And on “Relay,” after listing off a series of things she resents about an ex, she offers a critique of our hyper-socially-mediated world so savage it practically demands a standing ovation: “I resent you for presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure.” With her humor comes a playfulness that is still genuinely disarming to hear from a woman who wrote a song about herself and titled it “Sullen Girl.”

就像Apple的声音能从嘶哑尖叫瞬间变为仿佛只在她体内回响的低语一般，除了针砭现世，FtBC中的妙趣也是信手拈来。

在“Under the Table”中，Apple就像一位孤高的老女王：“老娘说过了这顿饭太捞不去”“你的蹄子别在桌面下指点江山了，我绝不住口”；“Rack of His”则以非常新奇的角度，赋予音乐家和乐器之间的关系更多的内涵：“看看他的那个吉他架，看看那一排琴颈”，Apple像是梦呓般唱道，旋即，论点披露：“我想我至少比这堆木头玩艺更懂你的哭诉。”

来到“Relay”一曲，除了把前男友一波曝光带走，Apple还对这个被交际过分介导的世界展开了“会说话就出本书”的华丽呵斥：“瞧你们这小日子作的，公关宣传册都是你们丫写的吧？？”如此幽默之下，想起Apple还有首关于自己的歌叫“Sullen Girl”(今天解解很丧惹)，直令人乐不可支。

The title track, and the album’s peak, is a work of musical bildungsroman, like a teenage girl’s diary, detailing the futility of fighting your way through a friendship, crying, and the secret power of a Kate Bush song. Apple sings of how the cool girls in school damaged her self-esteem, how the strength of your mind does not guarantee the fortitude of your heart. The energy centers of the song are reversed—the verses slink with gravity, the choruses are steadied and light. “Fetch the bolt cutters,” Apple sings like a spell, “I’ve been in here too long.” She has always strung words together like armor, but “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” feels designed to protect us. However you interpret it, the line, the song, and the album speak the language of transcendence. In 1996, on “The Child Is Gone,” Apple alluded to how the world can disconnect us from ourselves: “I’m a stranger to myself.” On “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” Apple narrates this experience, reclaims it, and resists it—a revolt against the very idea of being controlled.

来到专辑的同名曲目FtBC，它算是Apple的音乐成长史(bildungsroman)，又像花季少女的一则日记。在如同被重力轻轻吸走的节段、轻盈平稳的副歌中，FtBC记载着Apple尽管依靠好友、痛哭和聆听Kate Bush的歌曲得到过自勉但以失败告终的自我挣扎，记载着她在上学时被自大的“酷酷”女孩们糟践的自尊，以及意志力与内心的韧性不对等的痛苦。擅长将言语编织成自己护甲的Apple，反倒将核心的这句“Fetch the bolt cutters”化成最轻柔的咒语，选择把身上的护壁交付给听众，毕竟随后看来，这副装备有些沉重：“我驻留在此，已经太久了。” 不论从何种角度，这都是一种自我超越，毕竟24年前的Apple，在“The Child is Gone”中，还默许着世界让人们与自己脱节：“I’m a stranger to myself”，如今，她选择将这番经历和难受的被操控感全盘托出、回收置存、拒绝摒弃。

Fetch the Bolt Cutters includes Apple’s first songs discernibly addressed to other women. “Shameika” also chronicles her formative years by way of a pep talk to herself and an ode to the middle-school classmate who emboldened her with only a few fleeting words: “Shameika said I had potential.” The torchy barroom burner “Ladies” is an anti-jealousy anthem and it is pure comic genius. “Ladies! Ladies! Ladies! Ladies!” Apple toasts, imploring the new girlfriend of her ex-boyfriend to “please be my guest!” to whatever she may have left in the back of his kitchen cupboards and bathroom cabinets: “There’s a dress in the closet/Don’t get rid of it/You look good in it/I didn’t fit in it/It was never mine/It belonged to the ex-wife of another ex of mine.” Fetch the Bolt Cutters is full of audacious scenes like this, where Apple narrates, in vivid detail, experiences we just don’t typically hear in songs.

FtBC中也收录着Apple写给其他女性的作品。以中学同学名字命名的曲目“Shameika”，回忆并感谢了Shameika在Apple正值成长的年纪，给她的最简短而有力的鼓励：“Shameika说我大有未来。”

如酒吧里的昏灯愁情的Ladies则在尽显喜剧才华的同时，充当着迎击嫉妒的颂歌。”Ladies! Ladies! Ladies! Ladies!” Apple像是在一部剧中举杯敬酒，来到前男友的现女友身旁：“请便！”不过Apple的待客之道怕是要搞前男友的心态了：“在那衣柜里有一件礼服，请别回避，你很适合；我穿不下它，它与我无缘，它属于我那另一个前任的前妻。” 这般会玩而细致的叙事并不常见，但在FtBC中比比皆是。

This is all in keeping with the feminist reckoning that has swept through culture in a post-#MeToo society. But Fetch the Bolt Cutters is never didactic, even on (the potentially triggering) “For Her,” which Apple wrote in the wake of the shameful Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. For an artist whose early career existed under an all-seeing male eye, Apple wrote the song “Newspaper” from an unmistakable female gaze. In its lyrics, she feels “close” to another woman due to their shared past with an abusive man, as she observes his cruelty and lies from a distance. It’s a nuanced way of addressing a systemic problem. “It’s a shame because you and I didn’t get a witness,” she sings, but this song makes us all one, as do the brutal lyrics of “For Her.” “You know you should know but you don’t know what you did,” she sings, and later: “You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.” This is another side of Fiona Apple. It is not easy to sing along. But it demands that you listen.

虽然Apple和后#Metoo社会的女权主义者们并肩，但即使是在Apple从那场混账的布雷特·卡瓦诺(这货背着骚扰嫌疑在身还是当上了大法官)最高法院任命听证会之后写成的“For Her”中，也并没有教条气息。

经历过男权主义比现在更无孔不入地干涉诸事的以前，Apple撰写“Newspaper”时的女性视角更加缜密无误了。她对另一位同样被情人虐待的女性感同身受，恶者的扯谎和残忍在Apple的眼中挥之不去。这细腻的叙述确是一针见血，面对过去独自消化着暴行的自己，Apple说道：“没有人目睹我们所受的一切，这是一种耻辱。”如此赤裸自己的过去，自是让人心系彼此。“你自以为是，却毫不自知” “You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.” 这样唱出的自己的另一面是滴着血的，它值得倾耳而听。

She calls men out for refusing to show weakness, for treating their wives badly, for needing women to clean up their messes. Where The Idler Wheel explored a form of self-interrogation—“I’m too hard to know,” she crooned—on Fetch the Bolt Cutters, she unapologetically indicts the world around her. And she rejects its oppressive logic in every note. The very sound of Fetch the Bolt Cutters dismantles patriarchal ideas: professionalism, smoothness, competition, perfection—aesthetic standards that are tools of capitalism, used to warp our senses of self. Where someone else might erase a mistake—“Oh fuck it!” she chuckles on “On I Go”—she leaves it in. Where someone might put a bridge, she puts clatter. Where she once sang, “Hunger hurts but starving works,” here, in the devouring chorus of “Heavy Balloon,” she screams: “I spread like strawberries/I climb like peas and beans.” There is nothing top-down about the sound of Fetch the Bolt Cutters. “She wanted to start from the ground,” her guitarist David Garza told The New Yorker. “For her, the ground is rhythm.”

经历了The Idler Wheel中“I’m too hard to know”的自问自省时期的Apple，不仅仅怒斥对恋人颐指气使而好吃懒做的人间之耻们，她有着扑杀这个世界及其背后荒蛮的逻辑相关的一切，例如专断权威、圆滑玲珑、争夺对抗、完美主义···所有的这些被资本主义用来对立个体们的、粉饰过的所谓符合真美的标准的底气。

她诚实地遗留着谬错的印记。

她大步地跨过如有危险潜伏的暗沟。

她会认为“Hunger hurts but starving works”，但她也享受着“spread like strawberries/I climb like peas and beans”。

FtBC中的每一丝声音，都是绝无高低之别的。就像她的吉他手David Garza在《纽约人》所说：“Apple希望一切从最底层做起。底层的一切造就了她作品中的律动。”

There’s considerable power in how Apple entertains so many of these wild, inexhaustible impulses. “Don’t you, don’t you, don’t you, don’t you shush me!” she chips back on “Under the Table.” She will not be silenced. That’s patently clear from the start of Fetch the Bolt Cutters. In gnarled breaths on its opening song—feet on the ground and mind as her might—Apple articulates exactly what she wants: “Blast the music! Bang it! Bite it! Bruise it!” It’s not pretty. It’s free.

Apple产生的激荡是令人侧目的，它必将不断冲击人心。“就凭你，想让我安静么！” 她在Under the Table已经强调过一遍，甚至早在专辑的起初，Apple就决然站在了缄默的对立面。听听这专辑开头那声粗喘吧——“让乐浪炸开吧！响彻各界，去撕咬，去冲撞吧！” Apple一定是这么想的。这可不是什么华美之物——这是自由！！！