《I Know I'm Funny haha》 Pitchfork乐评搬运+拙译

原文地址：Faye Webster: I Know I’m Funny haha Album Review | Pitchfork

作者：Jeremy D. Larson

发表日期： JUNE 25 2021

翻译：Index（翻译若有不当之处，请指正）

There is so much depth to Faye Webster’s dazzling fourth album. It strikes a perfect balance between classic country stoicism and the sound of the saddest person you follow on social media.

Faye Webster令人眩晕的第四张专辑是如此的有深度。它在经典乡村音乐斯多葛主义和你在社交媒体上关注到最悲伤的声音之间达到了完美的平衡。

I was listening to Faye Webster speak from her home in Atlanta on the “How Long Gone” podcast about how she used to be something of a youth tennis star, how she doesn’t smoke weed but loves canned gin cocktails, how she practices yo-yo tricks while listening to EDM from a video game soundtrack. It was frothy and off-the-cuff, sketching a portrait of a down-home 23-year-old singer-songwriter whose rise to indie notoriety was boosted when her song “Better Distractions” landed on Barack Obama’s annual year-end playlist. (She sounded more concerned about a shipment of Pokémon cards that needed to arrive before she went on tour.) And then, during the interview, she would occasionally say, “I’m crying.” She’d say it when something was funny, the same way people type “I’m crying” when something is funny. But Webster said it dryly, with a kind of clinical detachment. She was neither laughing nor crying.

我听了Faye Webster在播客“How Long Gone”上的谈话，节目是在她Atlanta的家里录制的，她说她曾经是一个网球明星，不抽大麻，但是喜欢灌装的杜松子鸡尾酒，她讲述了自己如何一边听电子游戏配乐一边练习溜溜球技巧的。《Better Distractions》是一首充满泡沫的即兴歌曲，描绘了一位23岁乡村创作歌手的肖像。当这首歌被奥巴马（Barack Obam a）纳入到他的的年终播放列表时，这位歌手的名气暴增。（听起来，她更担心的是她是否能在巡演前拿到她的宝可梦卡）在采访过程中，她偶尔会说，“我哭了。”她会在谈论有趣的事情时加上这句话，就像人们在有趣的事情发生时输入“我哭了”一样。但Webster是用一种干巴巴的方式，带着一种客观超然的态度说这句话。她没有笑也没有哭。

This really captures the way Webster approaches her songwriting. Laughter and tears, boredom and loneliness, scummy landlords and Linkin Park, they all have the same density in her songs. Every moment on her fourth album, I Know I’m Funny haha, floats by at the same meaningless speed, the air so thick and humid that lines don’t land, they just slowly disappear. In the world of Webster’s lolling indie country and twangy R&B, comedy and tragedy are indistinguishable. Saying “I’m crying” out loud could scan as a wry adoption of online argot, winking at a feeling but a little afraid of it, how if you text a friend something really honest you might take out a little “haha” as an insurance policy.

这种干巴巴是Webster创作的方式。笑声和泪水，无聊和孤独，卑鄙的房东和Linkin Park，在她的歌曲中都有同样的密度。她第四张专辑《I Know I’m Funny haha》中的每一刻，都以同样毫无意义的速度飘过，空气是如此的浓厚和潮湿，以至于它们永远都不会着陆，而只是慢慢地消失在声音里。在Webster那懒洋洋的独立音乐王国和鼻音似的R&B世界里，我们难以区分喜剧和悲剧。大声地说出“我哭了”可以看作是对网络黑话的一种嘲讽——尴尬地眨眨眼，但又有点害怕。如果你给朋友发一些说真话的短信，为了保险可能会拿出一点“哈哈”作为保险。

But because Webster is such a wise and interesting lyricist, and because she peppers her songs with five-word phrases that could plot an entire novel, there’s so much more to I Know I’m Funny haha than its wan title might suggest. Scenes and feelings are rendered so simply and matter-of-factly that sometimes it’s like Webster is singing back the minutes of a meeting. Good days bleed into bad and back into good—she’s crying in a good way, she’s laughing because she’s just been hurt, and honestly who can tell the difference anymore? With Webster’s downy voice and a pedal-steel player named Matt “Pistol” Stoessel who almost steals the show, the album strikes a perfect balance between classic country stoicism and the sound of the saddest person you follow on social media.

Webster是一个睿智而有趣的词作者，而且因为她在歌曲中加入了可以构成一整部小说的五个单词短语，《I Know I’m Funny haha》这张专辑的内容比它的标题所暗示的要多得多。场景和情感被表达得如此简单和实事求是，以至于有时就像是Webster在背诵会议记录一样。好日子一天天过去，坏日子一天天过去，好日子又一天天过去——她哭得很开心，她受伤了，她笑了。说实话，谁能分辨出这些区别呢？在Webster柔和的嗓音和几乎抢尽风头的踏板钢琴家Matt“Pistol”Stoessel的演奏之下，这张专辑在经典的乡村斯多葛主义和你在社交媒体上关注的最悲伤的声音之间找到了完美的平衡。

All of the same pieces were in place on 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club, an album as glacially paced and melancholy as this. But there’s a brighter twinkle to the songs, a looser grip on where they go and how they work, more space for the band and the orchestration. “In a Good Way” takes a minute-and-a-half walk in the middle just to simmer in a ’90s nu-soul groove; the title track doesn’t even have a chorus; “Kind Of” ends on a three-minute vamp with the precise vibe of a Key West bar band playing a bossa nova tune at sunset. Webster nods to fellow Atlantan Rich Homie Quan, singing on the chorus about feeling some type of way, but, again, taking out a little “kind of” as insurance. It’s a song that’s speechless, trepidatious, almost incredulous about falling in love, and still it stretches out as if she never wants whatever feeling this is to end.

在2019年的专辑《Atlanta Millionaires Club》里，所有相同的作品特点都到位了。但是这张专辑的歌曲有更亮的闪光，对歌曲的走向有着更宽松的抓地力，为乐队和编曲留有更多的空间。《In a Good Way》在中间用了一个一分半钟的编排，只是为后面90年代的nu-soul groove做酝酿; 主打歌甚至没有和声；《Kind Of》结束在三分钟的“吸血鬼”调子中，带着西礁岛酒吧乐队在日落时演奏bossa nova的精确氛围。Webster向Atlanta的同胞Rich Homie Quan点了点头，唱着感受到了某种感觉的和声，再次阐述“kind of”。这是一首无言的、颤抖的、几乎会让人对爱情绝望的歌曲，但是歌曲依旧延续下去，仿佛她希望这种感觉永远不会结束。

Webster is an assassin who comes out of the shadows with something witheringly funny or totally devastating. And because this album comes pre-packaged with a hammock and warm breeze, it’s hard to do anything but smile when she delivers the blow. On the title track, Webster talks to her partner about his pretty sister in that loving but condescending way couples talk about each other’s siblings. “I made her laugh one time at dinner,” she sings. “She said I’m funny and then I thanked her/But I know I’m funny haha.” You see the whole spectrum of her personality in that one line—polite, sensitive, arrogant, actually funny—especially in the staccato way she sings “haha.” She elevates a forgettable phrase we all type all of the time into a moment that defines her character as a songwriter.

Webster是从阴影中出来的杀手，她的作品有着令人费解，或者说是毁灭性的幽默感。而且因为这张专辑预先吊床和温暖微风的包装，你除了用微笑面对她的打击，什么也做不了。在同名歌曲中，Webster和她的伴侣谈论他漂亮的妹妹，用着情侣们谈论彼此的兄弟姐妹时那种充满爱意但又居高临下的口吻。“有一次吃饭的时候，我逗她笑了,”她唱道，“她说我很有趣，然后我谢了她/我也知道我很有趣，哈哈。”你可以在这一句台词中看到她个性的全貌——彬彬有礼、敏感、傲慢，当然，还很有趣——特别值得注意的是她唱“哈哈”时那断断续续的方式。她又提醒了大家一个容易被忘记的短语，专辑再次确认了她作为一个词曲作家的合适性格。

There is, in fact, a great deal of crying on the record. There is one good cry (“In a Good Way”) but for the most part, it’s rough. She cries so much it hurts, asks herself if she’ll stop crying for once, cries for no reason, thinks that she might just sit around and cry. None of those lines are sad in and of themselves, but they create the vulnerable atmosphere for Webster to detail the absurd magnitude of her sadness: “There’s a difference between lonely and lonesome/But I’m both all the time,” she sings, ever the grammarian. But Webster’s great gift as a young saint of the bummer jam is how she captures emptiness. She absolutely owns the void that swallows all feeling, that nothingness through which all emotion must travel. One line from “A Stranger” says it all: “You know, I used to love getting bored/But now, without you, I have so much time to think there’s nothing to think about anymore.”

事实上，专辑里也有很多的哭泣。《In a Good Way》是一种精致的哭泣，但在其他的歌曲里，哭泣是粗糙的。她哭得很伤心、问自己能停下哭泣，哪怕只有一次、无缘无故地哭、只是坐在哪个地方哭。这些台词本身并不悲伤，但它们为Webster创造了一种脆弱的氛围，让她能详细地描述她悲伤的荒谬程度: “孤独和寂寞是有区别的/但我一直都是这样,”她唱道，多么像语法学家。作为一个年轻的圣徒，Webster的伟大天赋在于她捕捉空虚的方式。她拥有绝对吞噬一切情感的空虚，穿越一切情感的虚无。《A Stranger》中的一句歌词说明了一切: “你知道，我过去很喜欢无聊/但是现在，没有你，我有很多时间去想‘没有什么可想的了’。”

Yet the record never sinks into a dirge or sounds anemic. It is full and stoned and beautiful the entire time. The mood reminds me of smoky old Billie Holiday tunes, or the sunny stroll of a João Gilberto record, or the twilight magic of classic pedal-steel-driven songs like “Harvest Moon” or “Sleep Walk.” The band does a remarkable job of giving subtle little flourishes just a second or two to shine. The way Webster trills between two notes on the chorus of “Sometimes” and the strings follow her in unison; the way the piano ascends and the pedal steel descends at the end of “Better Distractions”; the way Webster drops the line, “There’s so much going on/My grandmother’s dead” in “A Dream With a Baseball Player,” a song about a teenage crush on Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. I Know I’m Funny haha is full of this delicious texture. It might come off a little shallow, but it reveals its great depth at its own unconcerned pace. It’s probably one of the best records of the year lol.

然而，这张专辑永远不会变成挽歌或者贫血的歌曲。专辑的全过程是充实的，飘飘欲仙的，美丽的。这种情绪让我想起了烟雾缭绕的Billie Holiday老歌，或是João Gilberto的唱片带来的阳光漫步，或是《Harvest Moon》《Sleep Walk》等经典踏板钢琴曲的暮色魔力。演奏乐队在歌曲里的一两秒钟的时间内就表现出了精彩的技巧。在《Sometimes》里和声部分，Webster两个音符之间加入了颤音，琴弦也跟随着她的步调；在《Better Distractions》的结尾处钢琴音调上升，踏板下降；Webster在《a Dream With a Baseball Player》中唱到“有太多事情在发生/我祖母去世了”，这是一首讲述对亚特兰大勇士队的外野手Ronald Acuña jr.的青春悸动。《I Know I’m Funny haha》充满了这种美味的质感。它可能看起来有点浅薄，但是它用自己无忧无虑的速度显示出独特的深度。这可能是今年最好的唱片之一lol。