《The Car》Pitchfork乐评及翻译
The Car
2022
8.0
- GENRE流派:
Rock摇滚
- LABEL厂牌:
Domino
- REVIEWED评论时间:
October 20, 2022
The English band returns with an adventurous, heavily orchestrated album filled with enigmatic songs of love, longing, and doubt.
这只英伦乐队带着一张富有野心的、精心编排的专辑回归了。其中谜一般的歌曲，传达出爱恋、渴望与怀疑。
To make a point, or at least the sort of point that Alex Turner might try to make, it’s good to get a little lost. The 36-year-old singer is in the midst of transforming Arctic Monkeys, one of the biggest rock bands of the new millennium, into a lovesick, debonair lounge act. At their recent live shows, throngs of fans go mad at the hint of a familiar drum beat or guitar riff, scenes that might lead you to suspect England had won the Euros, not that a wry group of Northerners had taken the stage in flared pants to sing about space hotels, espionage, and, sure, looking good on the dancefloor. After the heights of 2013’s AM, a swaggering album that rejuvenated Arctic Monkeys’ career, Turner turned inward and upward on 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, exposing his fears and desires obliquely, through the concept of an elaborate resort in the cosmos, watched over by Big Brother and populated by desperate ghouls dancing to the sultry notes of piano and synthesizers. It’s the most intimate Turner had ever been, opening up with the safety of fiction and metaphor.
看起来，Alex Turner，这位36岁的歌手正在让Arctic Monkeys转型，他将把千禧年最著名的乐队之一转为一个饱含相思之苦的、温文尔雅的乐队。在他们最近的live中，一堆粉丝为熟悉的鼓点和吉他riff疯狂，那疯狂的场面会让你怀疑是英格兰赢得了欧冠，而多半想不到引起疯狂的是一群滑稽的北方人穿着喇叭裤走上舞台唱着太空酒店、间谍活动以及“looking good on the dancefloor”在乐队用《AM》——一张让Arctic Monkeys神气活现的专辑再创新高之后，Turner回归内心，用2018年的《Tranquility Base Hotel&Casino》再上一个高度，通过详尽阐释专辑概念：一个被老大哥监视，里面住满绝望的食尸鬼的宇宙度假地，跟随钢琴和合成器的淫乱音符跳舞，他在这张专辑中拐弯抹角地表达了他的恐惧和渴望。Turner从未表达如此私人化的想法。
The Car, their seventh studio album, is filled with detours, non sequiturs, and lost trains of thought, held together by Turner’s undulating vocal lines and an orchestra always at the ready like a wind-up toy waiting to be stirred to life. But, as with its predecessor, the more time you spend in its maze, the clearer its themes become: The Car is an album of love, longing, and doubt, and the obfuscation serves to bolster its core belief that the simplest truths are the hardest ones to discover.
在他们的第七章录音室专辑《The Car》中，Turner以波澜起伏的人声拐弯抹角地胡言乱语着，表达着他一连串迷茫的想法，伴奏的弦乐总是听起来像等着被启动的发条玩具。但，这张专辑跟上张专辑一样，听得越多，主旨越明晰：这是一张有关爱恋、渴望和怀疑的专辑。专辑中的困惑属性支撑了它的核心思想：最简洁的真理是最难被发现的。
The objects of Turner’s fascination on The Car are hazy, making his writing all the more rich. He is not strictly heartbroken or smitten, but there are often distant lovers in the periphery. He is not wary of the techno-future, as was the case on Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, but modernity is not fully spared, like when he sings, “The simulation cartridge for City Life ’09 is pretty tricky to come by,” burying a sentimental message about the carefree past in something more foreboding. And he works in plenty of autobiographical lines that could easily apply to a man who’s been in the public eye for the better part of two decades. But just as soon as he reveals something personal, Turner quickly pivots away from the thought. Nothing is concrete, and that’s a key point of The Car. Things are not what they seem; blink and you’re gone.
这张专辑中，Turner的着迷对象并不明晰，这让他的歌词更有意思了。他不完全是悲伤，但从他歌词表面上总能看出恋人疏远的迹象。他并不像在《Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino》中那样，对科技的未来保持警惕，但现代性难以完全避免，就像她在歌中唱到的那样，“The simulation cartridge for City Life ’09 is pretty tricky to come by,”用不详的预感掩盖了对无忧无虑的过去的伤感。
One thing that is consistent across the album is that Turner is spooked, channeling paranoia through lyrics about spies and, even seedier, show business. On “Mr Schwartz,” the titular character is a commanding presence, if a bit of a mystery. The world around him bursts to life, and when Turner elegantly sings a line like, “Wardrobe’s lint-rolling your velveteen suit and smudging dubbin on your dancing shoes,” it’s clear that this man is of great import, catered to by his devotees as if he’s Jay Gatsby, but nothing untoward ever happens. The feeling of being in the wrong place or that something is amiss continues on “Sculptures of Anything Goes,” a song whose arrangement conveys the sensation of being trapped in a dark room, alone with anxieties and echoes, as Turner sings about foreign television performances and stark hallways. Everything is mixed-up, not wrong or bad, but peculiar, itching for a stasis it can’t reach.
Turner的惊慌贯穿了整张专辑，通过关于间谍的歌词传达出无端的恐惧。在《Mr Schwartz》中，这个虚构角色是一个威风凛凛的存在。他的世界充满了活力，Turner唱道“Wardrobe’s lint-rolling your velveteen suit and smudging dubbin on your dancing shoes”显然这个角色有很大的重要性，他像盖茨比一样被他的追随着迎合，只不过在他身上没有不幸发生。在《Sculptures of Anything Goes》不得其所、不合时宜的感觉持续存在着，当Alex唱到陌生的电视秀和荒凉的走廊，这首歌的给人一种被困在深幽的房间中，独自面对焦虑，与回声相伴的感觉。一切都是混乱的，但不是错的或是坏的，而是特别的，渴望达到一种不可能达到的停滞。
The music of The Car matches the uncertainty of the lyrics. After the opening “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball,” which could soundtrack a French noir film from just about any era, the band bursts into technicolor on the funk-inspired “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am.” On first listen, it’s like going from a café in the rain to a carnival. The transition works, however, because of the passionate performances from the band—drummer Matt Helders hums along on the former track like a jazz percussionist, while Turner leans into the ludicrousness of the latter with wah-wah riffs to match. Other adventures include “Jet Skis on the Moat,” which could pass for an Isaac Hayes cover, and “Body Paint,” a blast of baroque pop that has all the swagger and bravado of an AM cut without any of the lurid desperation. By its climax, you can hear some of the scrappy band that rocked out in the mid-aughts, mixed with traces of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’s sumptuous glamor.
《The Car》的音乐与歌词中传达出的不确定性搭配的很好。在能用于任何一部法国黑白电影的序曲《There’d Better Be a Mirrorball》结束后，紧接着是一首鲜艳的，放克式的《I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am》。第一遍听时感觉像是从雨中咖啡馆走到了狂欢节。这种过渡确实奏效，因为鼓手Matt Helders娴熟的表现，他像爵士乐手一样在上一首歌不停忙活着。而Turner用一种“哇哇”的滑稽音效开启了第二首歌。其他的歌曲包括《Jet Skis on the Moat》，它可以被认为是Isaac Hayes的歌曲翻唱，还有《Body Paint》，这是一首巴洛克流行音乐，拥有《AM》中狂妄和虚张声势却并不因华丽而庸俗。曲至高潮，你可以听到在中期奋力rock & roll的乐队，混合了《Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino》奢华魅力的痕迹。
With regularity on The Car, Turner will begin an idea that he does not finish, or he’ll introduce something totally different just when you start following along. He has become a master of turns of phrases that don’t necessarily cohere but still feel right: “There’d better be a mirrorball for me”; “Village coffee mornings with not long since retired spies”; “Lego Napoleon movie written in noble gas–filled glass tubes underlined in sparks.” These lines serve as dramatic punctuation to the times when Turner is more open: “And if you’re thinking of me I’m probably thinking of you,” he sings in “Body Paint,” bringing the song to a halt. It’s as if it’s the one line Turner truly wants to deliver and he’s crafted an entire song around it just to muster up the courage to sing it.
在《The Car》的歌词中，Turner会时不时插入他思索到一半的想法，或者在你注意上一句歌词时，他突然引入完全不相干的东西。他已然成为一个措辞大师，这些短语不一定连贯，但仍让人感觉正确，像是“There’d better be a mirrorball for me”; “Village coffee mornings with not long since retired spies”; “Lego Napoleon movie written in noble gas–filled glass tubes underlined in sparks.”在Turner更开放时，这些歌词可以充当戏剧性的标点符号：“And if you’re thinking of me I’m probably thinking of you,”他在《Body Paint》里唱道，继而给这首歌画上句号。就好像这是Turner在这首歌唯一想传达的讯息，他写下这首歌只是为了鼓起说出这句话的勇气。
Turner sings much of The Car in falsetto. He began his career close to his speaking voice, matching his unbridled, true-to-life observations of days and nights in Sheffield. Over the years, he would expand his range, but when he’d switch to a higher register, it was almost like a send-up, embodying the hip-swinging showman who can poke fun at rockstar machismo while still behaving a bit laddishly. Now that falsetto is nearly the standard on The Car, Turner has collapsed the irony and remove, and he is singing that way for some of his most sincere moments. It’s as if what had previously been an escape is now a reality. A way of being vulnerable with more than words. Earnest misdirection.
《The Car》中，Turner多是用假声唱歌。在Turner刚出道时，他几乎是用他说话的方式唱歌，从而与他对谢菲尔德昼夜肆意的、真实的观察相匹配。在过去几年里，他试图扩展音域，但当他真正转换到高声区时，几乎就像是在开玩笑，像是一个摇摆臀部的表演家，取笑着摇滚明星的“男子气概”，同时还表现得有些孩子气。而在《The Car》中，假音已成为了一个鲜明的标志，这样做瓦解了他假声的讽刺性质，因为在他最真诚的时刻，他就是用假声唱的。这就像以前的逃避变成了事实。用超越言语的方式变得脆弱。真诚的误导。
