Pitchfork评测Labi Siffre代表专辑Crying Laughing Loving Lying

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the British singer-songwriter’s 1972 album, an intimate and delicate collection of queer folk-rock from one of the best voices in his generation.

每个星期天，Pitchfork都会深入查看过去的重要专辑，任何不在我们的档案中记录都符合条件。今天，我们重温了这位英国创作歌手1972年的专辑，这是他那一代人中最好的声音之一的酷儿民谣摇滚的亲密而精致的收藏。

“There are things you can say in a song that you would be too embarrassed to say in conversation,” Labi Siffre told a BBC interviewer in 1972. “In a song you can say it and it sounds correct. It’s a cowardly way of saying things one would never say.” Delightfully unpretentious, Siffre sits in a gray collared shirt against a window overlooking a thicket of trees, still fresh-faced at 27 years old and already sharply perceptive of the vulnerability of his own folk music. He’s being a little playful, quoting a song of his own at the end. His confidence is earned: He had just released his exquisite third album, Crying Laughing Loving Lying, the record which introduced him as a generational talent, one who over the next 50 years would create timeless music that’s become a touchstone for his folk descendants, pop superstars, and rappers alike.

Labi Siffre在1972年告诉BBC采访者：“有些事情你可以在一首歌中说出来，你会不好意思在谈话中说。”“在一首歌中，你可以说出来，听起来很正确。这是一种懦弱的说话方式，人们永远不会说。”Siffre穿着一件灰色有领的衬衫，坐在窗户上，俯瞰着丛树，27岁时仍然焕然一新，已经敏锐地察觉到自己民谣的弱点。他有点幽默，在最后引用了自己的一首歌。他的信心是赢得的：他刚刚发行了他精美的第三张专辑《Crying Laughing Loving Lying》，这张唱片将他介绍为一代人才，在接下来的50年里，他将创造永恒的音乐，成为他的民谣后代、流行巨星和说唱歌手的试金石。

Born in 1945 in Hammersmith, London, to a Nigerian father and multi-racial mother from Leeds, Siffre was the fourth of five brothers. He followed in their footsteps and attended a religious school that proved an ill fit for the artist. “I was brought up to have low self-esteem,” he once said of growing up as a gay kid surrounded by rigid Catholic ideology. “I grew up being told by society that as a homosexual I was a bad, wicked, evil person.” The experience led him to become a lifelong atheist; he recalled being bemused at how people believed in an omnipotent man who “does magic tricks of life or death.” For Siffre, his emotions and beliefs mattered most—mindfulness of those around you, political engagement, love and compassion. He identified as gay as early as 4 years old, a sheer, unalterable fact that inevitably colored his life and music. “The most important thing in your life is what happens at home,” Siffre once said. “It is head and shoulders above everything else.”

Siffre于1945年出生于伦敦哈默史密斯，父亲是尼日利亚人，母亲来自利兹，是五个兄弟中的第四个。他追随他们的脚步，上了一所宗教学校，这所学校被证明不适合这位艺术家。“我从小就自卑，”他曾经说过，作为一个被僵化的天主教意识形态包围的同性恋孩子长大。“我从小就被社会告知，作为一个同性恋者，我是一个坏的、邪恶的、邪恶的人。”这段经历使他成为一名终生的无神论者；他回忆说，他对人们如何相信一个“做生死攸关的魔术”的全能的人感到困惑。对Siffre来说，他的情感和信仰最重要——你周围人的正念、政治参与、爱和同情心。他早在4岁就认定自己是同性恋，这是一个纯粹的、不可改变的事实，不可避免地影响了他的生活和音乐。Siffre曾经说过：“你生命中最重要的事情是在家里发生的事情。”“它的头和肩膀凌驾于一切之上。”

To escape Catholicism’s orthodoxy, Siffre found solace in music he discovered in his older brother Kole’s expansive, well-curated vinyl collection: Fats Domino, Charles Mingus, and Little Richard, plus electric bluesman Jimmy Reed, jazz-pop lounge singer Mel Tormé, and the soul-stirring Billie Holiday. Those early influences often bubble up in Siffre’s music, delivered through his complex fretwork, bittersweet lyricism, and a sense of wilted yearning bound in sweet melodies. An obsessive childhood love of Frank Sinatra’s dramatic, heartbroken “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” speaks volumes to the wistfulness that arcs through his discography.

为了逃避天主教的正统观念，Siffre在他哥哥Kole的广阔、精心策划的黑胶唱片收藏中发现了音乐的慰藉：Fates Domino、Charles Mingus和Little Richard，以及电子蓝调歌手Jimmy Reed、爵士流行音乐慵懒风格歌手Mel Tormé和融合灵魂乐的歌手的Billie Holiday。这些早期的影响经常在Siffre的音乐中产生，通过他复杂的装饰、苦乐参半的抒情和被甜美的旋律束缚的枯萎的渴望感来传达出来。童年时对Frank Sinatra戏剧性的、心碎的《One for My Baby (And One More for the Road）》的痴迷爱充分说明了他唱片中的渴望。

By the mid ’60s, Siffre had his mind fixed on becoming a musician. While slogging through an array of day jobs—driving an unlicensed taxi, working as a filing clerk at Reuters, carrying and stacking boxes at a warehouse—he played guitar by night in a trio at Annie’s Club in the Soho district, run by famed jazz artist Annie Ross. Modeling his bluesy style after legendary guitarist Wes Montgomery, the moonlighting allowed Siffre to hone his skills while encountering a series of stars: Mose Allison, Betty Carter, and Joe Williams all passed through the club, setting Siffre’s mind ablaze as he learned from watching his childhood heroes up close. Eventually, he began performing solo at saxophonist Ronnie Scott’s club, where he switched to singing and ditched the electric guitar, preferring the closeness of sound that an acoustic offered him. “For me it always feels as though the amplifier is between me and the guitar,” he explained. “If it’s all fingers then it’s just you.”

到60年代中期，Siffre决心成为一名音乐家。在从事一系列日常工作时——驾驶无证出租车，在路透社担任档案员，在仓库搬运和堆放箱子——晚上，他在苏荷区安妮俱乐部的三人组中弹吉他，该俱乐部由著名爵士艺术家安妮·罗斯经营。以传奇吉他手Wes Montgomery为蓝调风格，兼职让Siffre在遇到一系列明星时磨练自己的技能：Mose Allison、Betty Carter和Joe Williams都经历了俱乐部歌手的生活，当他从近距离观察他童年的英雄中学到东西时，点燃了Siffre的头脑。最终，他开始在萨克斯管演奏家罗尼·斯科特的俱乐部进行独奏，在那里他转而唱歌，抛弃了电吉他，更喜欢原声给他提供的亲密的声音。他解释说：“对我来说，总是感觉放大器在我和吉他之间。”“如果都是手指，那么就只有你。”

That intimacy, drawn from Siffre’s faithful acoustic guitar and his inimitable, high-pitched voice, imbues his music with a comforting glow, as if bathed in the warmth of a snug fireplace. Following his improvised jazz club education, Siffre briefly attended the Eric Gilder School of Music in his early twenties for lessons in harmony, guitar, and singing, where he discovered he’d “merely been hearing” as opposed to listening. At 24, feeling more confident and strapped with several demos and a backing band of his own, he spent three months performing at clubs in Amsterdam to find his footing onstage. When he returned to London in 1969, the demos had made their way around the industry and he was signed for his first album, spurring a prolific run through the beginning of the 1970s that contains some of the decade’s most beguiling music.

这种亲密关系来自Siffre忠实的原声吉他和他无与伦比的高亢的声音，为他的音乐注入了舒适的光芒，仿佛沐浴在舒适的壁炉的温暖中。在接受即兴爵士俱乐部教育后，Siffre在二十出头的Eric Gilder音乐学院短暂就读于和声、吉他和唱歌，在那里他发现自己“只是在听”，而不是听。24岁时，他感到更加自信，并被几个演示和一个自己的后援乐队所束缚，他花了三个月的时间在阿姆斯特丹的俱乐部表演，以找到自己的立足点。当他于1969年回到伦敦时，这些演示已经走遍了整个行业，他签署了他的第一张专辑，在20世纪70年代初推动了作品丰富的运动，其中包含了一些十年来最迷人的音乐。

Siffre’s first two albums, 1970’s self-titled debut and its follow-up, The Singer and the Song, are rife with pristine, homespun folk-pop like “Bless the Telephone,” a song about waiting for a lover’s call that remains one of Siffre’s most masterful expressions of everyday romance. The records were modest successes, led by the lilting, strings-laden radio hit “Make My Day.” By the time he recorded his third album, Crying Laughing Loving Lying, he had found a sweet spot, chiseling every element of his craft down to a polished, delicate new form.

Siffre的前两张专辑，1970年代的同名处女作及其后续专辑《The Singer and the Song》，充斥着原始、土生土长的民谣流行音乐，如《Bless the Telephone》，这是一首关于等待情人电话的歌曲，仍然是Siffre最精湛的日常浪漫表达之一。这些唱片取得了不小的成功，以轻率、弦乐的电台热门歌曲《Make My Day》为首。当他录制他的第三张专辑《Crying Laughing Loving Lying》时，他已经找到了一个甜蜜点，将他手艺的每个元素都凿成一种完美、精致的新形式。

Crying Laughing Loving Lying is produced and written in its entirety by Siffre. The music runs counter to the flowery, psychedelic English folk of the era, confronting the listener immediately with the stark a cappella song “Saved.” “I am a free man, and my father he was a slave,” he sings, voice soaring into an echo, “I have been broken but my children will be saved.” The song sets the table for the album’s focus on nurturing and being nurtured above any other higher power. “I don’t need religion to tell me what to do,” he affirms. “I know that I should love you.”

《Crying Laughing Loving Lying》，由Siffre完整创作和撰写。音乐与那个时代华丽、迷幻的英国民谣背道而驰，听众立即与赤裸裸的无伴奏歌曲《Saved》对峙。“我是一个自由人，我的父亲，他是一个奴隶，”他唱着，声音响起，“我已经崩溃了，但我的孩子会得救。”这首歌为专辑专注于培养和培养凌驾于任何其他更高力量之上奠定了基础。“我不需要宗教来告诉我该怎么做，”他肯定地说。“我知道我应该爱你。”

An album full of sumptuous acoustic folk, Crying Laughing Loving Lying remains his best work, a fine-wrought synthesis of his lovestruck sound. The jaunty “It Must Be Love” rides a taut ukulele melody during its verses before blooming into a full-hearted valentine: “I need to be near you every night, every day,” he sings, gentle as a down comforter. It’s no wonder the crowdpleaser became the album’s biggest hit, lending itself well to a swaying Top of the Pops performance and reaching No. 14 on the UK charts. But the best song is the knotty, early highlight “Cannock Chase.” Siffre’s guitar gently canters forward while his voice reaches up into a dreamy falsetto to overcome a wave of self-doubt. “I thought my day would never come,” he sings, “Maybe it won’t/But I’ll have fun and I’ll hold tight/’Cause that way it might.” The hopefulness is spurred on by a flurry of horns and strings, rising around him like birdsong.

《Crying Laughing Loving Lying》是一张充满奢华原声民谣的专辑，仍然是他最好的作品，是他充满爱的声音的精心合成。欢快的“It Must Be Love”在诗句中骑着紧绷的尤克里里旋律，然后绽放成一个全心全意的情人节：“我需要每天晚上，每天都在你身边，”他唱道，温柔得像羽绒服。难怪The crowdpleaser成为这张专辑最大的热门歌曲，很好地表现了摇摇曳的Top of the Pops，并在英国排行榜上排名第14位。但最好的歌曲是棘手的早期亮点《Cannock Chase》。Siffre的吉他轻轻地向前弹，而他的声音伸向梦幻般的假声，以克服一波自我怀疑。“我以为我的日子永远不会到来，”他唱道，“也许它不会/但我会玩得很开心，我会紧紧抓住/因为这样可能会。”一连串的喇叭和弦声激发了这种希望，像鸟鸣一样在他周围升起。

Siffre’s openness is his greatest strength as a songwriter. He had come out of the closet by the time Crying was released, and was no longer writing oblique lyrics in his ballads. “It occurred to me that I couldn’t do that any more,” he said, instead determined to speak directly about the men he loved, even if listeners didn’t catch on so easily. “I don’t care if there’s another man/I don’t care if there’s three or four,” he sings with a tremble in his throat on the lullaby “Fool Me a Good Night.” “I don’t care because it’s better than the way I was living before.” His queer love songs were written in plain sight, unavoidable to those who listened close enough. (“Give me the simple signs,” he sings on the same song, “Just the ones I want to see.”) The same is true of the sweet, minute-long “Till Forever,” which opens with the image of Siffre peering up from a book to see his lover asleep and wearing his sweater on the sofa, a scene of lived-in romantic bliss that’s restorative in its sincerity. “Put your arms around me, now, after all this time,” Siffre sings in a rousing example of his eye-widening breath control, allowing the phrase to deepen like an exhale.

Siffre的开放是他作为作曲家的最大优势。当Crying被释放时，他已经从壁橱里出来了，不再在他的民谣中写倾斜的歌词。“我突然想到，我不能再这样做了，”他说，而是决心直接谈论他所爱的男人，即使听众没有那么容易理解。“我不在乎是否有另一个男人/我不在乎是否有三个或四个人，”他在摇篮曲《愚弄我一个美好的夜晚》中喉咙颤抖着唱歌。“我不在乎，因为这比我以前的生活方式要好。”他的同性恋情歌是在众目睽睽之下写的，对于那些听得足够近的人来说是不可避免的。（“给我简单的标志，”他在同一首歌中唱道，“只是我想看的那些。”）甜蜜的、一分钟长的《直到永远》也是如此，它以Siffre从书中抬起头来，看到他的爱人睡着，穿着毛衣在沙发上的形象开始，这是一个生活在浪漫幸福的场景，恢复了它的诚意。“现在搂着我，在这么长时间之后，”Siffre唱着他睁大眼睛呼吸控制的振奋人心的例子，让这句话像呼气一样加深。

Siffre’s steady command extends to his uniquely diaristic songs, adding further heft to the ethereal instrumentation and songwriting. “Hotel Room Song” is one of the few tracks about a specific autobiographical moment, based on a TV interview that put Siffre in a sour mood before a concert. The song catches him mid-thought over career doubts, captured against rippling guitar and celesta: “Last night I thought ‘I’ll never ever write another song,’” he sings ponderously, “Last night I decided that all the songs I write are wrong.” It’s a brief self-portrait of a young artist struggling with the demands of an industry he already found himself in spiritual conflict with.

Siffre的稳定指挥延伸到他独特的日记歌曲，为空灵的乐器和歌曲创作增添了更大的重量。《Hotel Room Song》是为数不多的关于特定自传时刻的曲目之一，基于电视采访，该采访让Siffre在音乐会前心情酸涩。这首歌抓住了他对职业疑虑的思考，抓住了波纹吉他和钢片琴：“昨晚我想'我再也不会写另一首歌了，'”他深思熟虑地唱道，“昨晚我决定我写的所有歌曲都是错的。”这是一个年轻的艺术家在与他已经陷入精神冲突的行业的需求作斗争的简短自画像。

On the title track, another hit single, he finds astonishing beauty in simplicity. Locking into a mesmerizing roundelay, Siffre circles a tranquil guitar melody with warm, multi-tracked vocals, moving through four similar verses that capture a swirl of contradictions with sly ease. “Loving never did me no good no how,” he sings, “That’s why I can’t love you now.” Then he reveals the undercurrent of irony: “Lying never did nobody no good, no how,” he allows, voice fading into the air, “So why am I lying now?” It’s a distillation of his best songwriting impulses, roaming and tightened at once, with sheer joy holding its center.

在另一首热门单曲的标题曲中，他在简单中发现了惊人的美。Siffre锁定在一个迷人的回旋曲中，用温暖、多轨的人声环绕着宁静的吉他旋律，在四个类似的诗句中移动，轻松地捕捉到矛盾的漩涡。“爱从来没有对我没有好处，没有好处，”他唱道，“这就是为什么我现在不能爱你。”然后他揭示了讽刺的暗流：“撒谎从来没有让任何人没有好处，没有如何，”他允许，声音消失在空中，“那么为什么我现在在撒谎？”这是他最好的歌曲创作冲动的蒸馏，同时漫游和收紧，纯粹的喜悦占据了中心。

Crying Laughing Loving Lying reached No. 11 on the UK charts, making it his most successful album and leading to critical acclaim and a wider fanbase. The music on his three follow-up albums, especially 1973’s social justice-minded For the Children and 1975’s funky Remember My Song, continued his trend of crafting precise, absorbing music, now occasionally informed by more explicit political and sociological ideas. Unsurprisingly, audiences weren’t as receptive.

《Crying Laughing Loving Lying》在英国排行榜上排名第11位，使其成为他最成功的专辑，并获得了好评和更广泛的粉丝群。他的三张后续专辑中的音乐，特别是1973年的《For the Children的社会正义》和1975年的时髦的《记住我的歌》，延续了他制作精确、引人入胜的音乐的趋势，现在偶尔会受到更明确的政治和社会学思想的影响。不出所料，观众没有那么乐于接受。

Following the release of 1975’s Happy, Siffre moved to the English countryside to spend time with his lifelong partner and husband, Peter Lloyd, and focus on different pursuits. He was disillusioned by a fickle music industry and the constant demand to write singles resembling past successes. “I went in believing that the music business would be run by—who else?—musicians,” he conceded. Siffre also faced the claustrophobic labeling of his music by his various identities. “Being Black, you were supposed to be ethnic. Being gay, you were supposed to be camp,” he explained. “Then you could be put in a little box.” His work always resisted such markers and Siffre insisted that his music be respected on its own, never abiding by the cult of celebrity around any artist.

在1975年的《Happy》发行后，Siffre搬到了英国乡村，与他的终身伴侣和丈夫Peter Lloyd共度时光，并专注于不同的业余爱好。他对变化无常的音乐行业和写出类似于过去成功的单曲的不断需求感到失望。“我相信音乐业务将由——还有谁？——音乐家经营，”他承认。Siffre还面临着各种身份对他的音乐的幽闭恐惧症标签。“作为黑人，你应该是种族。作为同性恋，你应该是营地，”他解释道。“然后你可以被放进一个小盒子里。”他的作品总是抵制这种标记，Siffre坚持认为他的音乐应该单独受到尊重，从不遵守任何艺术家周围对名人的崇拜。

During his absence from the spotlight, however, Siffre never stopped writing. He returned to the charts in 1987 when, horrified by a documentary on apartheid in South Africa, he penned the anthemic “(Something Inside) So Strong” as a direct response. While its lyrics vividly condemn racist discrimination, “So Strong” is multifaceted and speaks just as easily to Siffre’s sexuality. “The higher you build your barriers/The taller I become,” go the opening lines, offering a path of self-expression for those who may not have one readily available. Through his music, Siffre has always subverted the ways institutions exert power over people, threading themes of self-empowerment into his easy-listening production with subtle repose. During Pride month in 2020, he released the ballad “(Love Is Love Is Love) Why Isn’t Love Enough?,” a reworking of an older track that speaks to years of living and loving as a queer person.

然而，在他不在聚光灯下时，Siffre从未停止过写作。1987年，他重返排行榜，当时他对一部关于南非种族隔离的纪录片感到震惊，他写了国歌《(Something Inside) So Strong》作为直接回应。虽然它的歌词生动地谴责了种族主义歧视，但《So Strong》是多方面的，同样轻松地讲述了Siffre的性取向。“你的障碍越高/我就越高，”开场白，为那些可能没有现成的人提供了一条自我表达的道路。通过他的音乐，Siffre一直颠覆了机构对人们行使权力的方式，将自我赋权的主题融入到他以微妙的休息轻松聆听的作品中。在2020年的骄傲月期间，他发行了民谣《Love Is Love Is Love) Why Isn’t Love Enough》，这是对一首旧曲目的改编，讲述了多年来作为一个同性恋者的生活和爱情。

Though Siffre never became a household name, his influence is wide-reaching. When the ska-punk band Madness covered “It Must Be Love” in 1981, it peaked at No. 4 in the UK and has since become a wedding staple in the country (Siffre is there at the end of the video, grinning and playing a violin as a surprise member of the band). Olivia Newton-John released a version of “Crying Laughing Loving Lying” in 1975, while Kenny Rogers covered “So Strong” and built an entire album around the song only a year after its release, giving it a healthy second wind. As recently as 2014, Kelis recorded a cover of “Bless the Telephone,” adding to the song’s lovelorn pathos with her own faithful spin.

虽然Siffre从未成为家喻户晓的名字，但他的影响是深远的。当斯卡朋克乐队Madness在1981年翻唱《It Must Be Love》时，它在英国排名第四，此后成为该国的婚礼主打歌曲（Siffre在视频的结尾处，作为乐队的惊喜成员咧嘴笑着拉着小提琴）。Olivia Newton-John于1975年发行了《Crying Laughing Loving Lying》的版本，而Kenny Rogers翻唱了《So Strong》，并在这首歌发行一年后就围绕这首歌制作了一整张专辑，给它带来了健康的第二风。就在2014年，Kelis录制了《Bless the Telephone》的翻唱，用她自己可信任的的倾向性的陈述增加了这首歌的失恋悲情。

It’s easy to see why so many artists remain besotted by Siffre’s unassuming complexity. His work most prominently pumps through hip-hop’s DNA; it’s Siffre’s funky guitar, reinterpreted from the delirious 1975 two-hander “I Got the…,” that Jay-Z used for “Streets Is Watching” and which Dr. Dre looped in order to launch Eminem’s career on “My Name Is.” (Siffre, unfamiliar with sampling and bothered by Eminem’s lazily homophobic and misogynist lyrics, only approved a clean version of the track at the time.) On “I Wonder,” a beatific track from Kanye West’s 2007 album Graduation, West lifts a passage from Crying’s “My Song” and leaves it largely intact, fully understanding the power of his voice left unadorned. Siffre’s work is so stitched into the pop cultural fabric that, once you start to look, you find his fingerprints everywhere.

很容易理解为什么这么多艺术家仍然沉迷于Siffre谦逊的复杂性。他的作品最突出的是嘻哈的DNA；这是Siffre的时髦吉他，从1975年令人眼花缭乱的双手《I Got the...》中重新诠释，Jay-Z用于《Streets Is Watching》，Dr.Dre为了在《My Name Is》中启动Eminem的职业生涯而循环。（Siffre不熟悉采样，被Eminem懒惰的恐同和厌恶女性的歌词所困扰，当时只批准了该曲目的干净版本。）在Kanye West2007年专辑《Graduation》中的一首好歌《I Wonder》中，West引用了Crying的《My Song》中的一段话，并使其基本完好无损，充分理解他的声音的力量。Siffre的作品被缝合在流行文化结构中，一旦你开始寻找，你会发现他的指纹无处不在。

Now in his 70s, Siffre is a prolific author and has begun to open up more in interviews on his undersung career with characteristically British modesty—“I’m getting used to being rediscovered,” he joked with a hearty laugh during a 2020 podcast. His entire catalog is rooted in that unswaying sense of self. “I don’t believe in giving the audience what they want,” he said in that early 1972 BBC interview. “I believe in giving them my best and making them like it. You don’t make hit records that way, but you can sleep at night.” A profound sense of dignity courses through Siffre’s entire career, but it effloresced on Crying Laughing Loving Lying, a statement of compassion that hasn’t lost any of its well-worn charms.

现在他70多岁了，Siffre是一位多产的作家，他开始在采访中更多地公开他以典型的英国谦虚为名的职业生涯——“我已经习惯了被重新发现，”他在2020年的播客中开怀大笑。他的整个目录都植根于那种摇摆的自我意识。他在1972年初的BBC采访中说：“我不相信给观众他们想要的东西。”“我相信给他们我最好的，让他们喜欢它。你不会那样制作热门唱片，但你可以在晚上睡觉。”一种深刻的尊严感贯穿了Siffre的整个职业生涯，但它在《Crying Laughing Loving Lying》上进行了阐述，这是一份没有失去任何陈腐魅力的同情心声明。