Pitchfork评测Wilco专辑Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Myth, it has been said, is the buried part of every story. On April 23rd, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally emerges ...

有人说，虚构的故事是每个故事中被埋葬的部分。4月23日，Yankee Hotel Foxtrot终于发行了......

Myth, it has been said, is the buried part of every story. On April 23rd, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally emerges into the light of day, having spent the last year interred in its own cluttered mythology: a hermetic studio gestation, with the inscrutable guidance of Chicago ex-pat/kindly wizard, Jim O'Rourke; internecine squabbles; conflict and resolution with American media behemoth AOL Time Warner; the release portentously slated for September 11th, but mysteriously delayed; the indecipherable short-wave radio prophecies; and, eventually, the hero's welcome, with the first stirrings of spring. It's all there: the miracle birth; the unlikely hero; the, um, benevolent mentor; the primordial menace; good over evil. Joseph Campbell would be pissing himself if he weren't dead.

有人说，虚构是每个故事中被埋葬的部分。4月23日，Yankee Hotel Foxtrot终于出现在曙光灯下，在自己杂乱的虚构中度过了最后一年：在芝加哥侨民/善良的巫师吉姆·奥洛克(Jim O'Rourke)的神秘指导下，一个封闭的工作室孕育;互相争吵;与美国媒体巨头AOL时代华纳的冲突与解决方案;专辑原定于9月11日上映，但却神秘地被推迟了;无法破译的短波无线电预言;最后，随着春天的第一次出现，英雄们迎来了欢迎。一切都在那里:奇迹的诞生;不可能的英雄;仁慈的导师;原始的威胁;善战胜恶。约瑟夫·坎贝尔如果没死，肯定会尿裤子的。

The miraculous birth narrative of Wilco's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is already old hat: banished from straightedge AOL Time Warner imprint Reprise on the cosmically short-sighted judgment of label executives who deemed the album a "career-ender," Wilco streamed Yankee Hotel from its left-wing website to millions before signing with weirdo progressive AOL Time Warner imprint Nonesuch. Long is the way and hard that leads up from AOL Time Warner into the light, I guess.

Wilco第四张专辑《Yankee Hotel Foxtrot》的神奇诞生叙事已经是老旧了：由于唱片公司高管视这张专辑为“职业生涯的终结”，目光极其短浅，他被美国在线时代华纳旗下的唱片公司开除。 Wilco将Yankee Hotel从其左翼网站流式传输到数百万人，然后与我想，从美国在线时代华纳走向光明的路漫长而又艰难。

But the unique circumstances of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's long deliverance make for more than just pointless disc jockey chatter before spinning "Heavy Metal Drummer." The long delay and streaming audio conspired to ensure that everyone in the world has already heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in part, if not in its entirety. Vast digital pre-circulation, corporate controversy, and buzz like a beard of bees have rendered all reviews afterthoughts at best.

但是Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的独特环境使得它在播放“Heavy Little Drummer”之前不仅仅是毫无意义的唱片骑师闲聊。长时间的延迟和流媒体音频共同确保世界上的每个人都已经听到了Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的部分内容，如果不是全部的话。大量的数字预发行、唱片公司的争议和蜂群般的嗡嗡声，让所有的评论充其量只是事后的想法。

But myth is always an afterthought, and these days, the motif I like chewing on best is, without question, that of the Unlikely Hero. Who would have predicted an album of this magnitude from Wilco? As much I love the band, the fact remains that they were together for five years before they produced anything that could stand with Uncle Tupelo's March 16-20, 1992 or Anodyne. AM is rather forgettable, while the expansive Being There, though frequently inspired, travels on paths blazed by Tom Petty on Damn the Torpedoes, if not The Flying Burrito Brothers.

但虚构总是事后的想法，这些天，毫无疑问，我最喜欢思考的主题是“不可能的英雄”。谁能预测Wilco会有这么重量级的专辑呢？尽管我很喜欢这支乐队，但事实是，他们在一起五年了，然后他们制作了任何能与图珀洛叔叔1992年3月16日至20日或Anodyne相配的东西。AM是相当令人难忘的，而扩张内容的专辑Being There，尽管经常受到启发，却在Tom Petty在Damn the Torpedoes上开辟的道路上旅行，如果不是The Flying Burrito Brothers的话。

1999's dolorous Summerteeth was exponentially more sophisticated than anything that came before it, though its heroin innuendoes, shades of domestic abuse and nocturnal homicidal impulses sat somewhat ill at ease alongside the album's lush and infectious pop arrangements. Of course, Summerteeth was a strange and majestic, albeit dark, deviation from the alt-country genre Jeff Tweedy co-invented. But since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it has retroactively become more of a harbinger of things to come. Upon being pressed by the Chicago Sun-Times about abandoning alt-country, Tweedy dismissively bequeathed the old Wilco sound to Ryan Adams. And you can never go home again.

1999年的《Summerteeth》比之前的任何东西都要复杂得多，尽管它的hai洛因影射、家庭虐待的阴影和夜间杀人冲动与专辑的郁郁葱葱和富有感染力的流行音乐编曲一起感到有些不安。当然，Summerteeth是一个奇怪而雄伟的，尽管是黑暗的，偏离了Jeff Tweedy共同发明的另类音乐流派。但自从Yankee Hotel Foxtrot以来，它已经追溯性地成为未来事情的预兆。当《芝加哥太阳时报》(Chicago Sun-Times)要求他放弃另类乡村音乐时，Tweedy不屑一顾地把威Wilco的老声音留给了瑞安·亚当斯(Ryan Adams)。你再也不能回家了。

So does Yankee Hotel Foxtrot justify the controversy, delay and buzz? Everyone, I think, already knows that the answer is yes; all I can offer is "me too" and reiterate. And after half a year living with a bootleg copy, the music remains revelatory. Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene, Wilco's aging new album is simply a masterpiece; it is equally magnificent in headphones, cars and parties. And as anyone who's seen the mixed-bag crowd at Wilco shows knows, it will find a home in the collections of hippies, frat boys, acid-eating prep schoolers, and the record store apparatchiks of the indiocracy. No one is too good for this album; it is better than all of us.

那么，Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的争议、延误和喧嚣是否合理呢?我想，每个人都已经知道答案是肯定的;我所能提供的就是“我也是”并重申。在与盗版唱片一起发行了半年之后，这些音乐仍然具有启示性。复杂而危险的朗朗上口，抒情的精致而刺激，喧闹而宁静，Wilco的这张老旧的新专辑简直是一部杰作;它在耳机、汽车和派对上同样华丽。任何在Wilco时装秀上看过混搭包的人都知道，它将在嬉皮士、兄弟会男孩、嗜酸预科生和印度唱片店官员的收藏中找到自己的家。这张专辑配不上任何人;它比我们所有人都好。

But for all the talk of terminally hip influences-- Jim O'Rourke, krautrock, and The Conet Project-- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot still conjures a classic rock radio station on Fourth of July weekend. And this extends beyond the alternating Byrds/Stones/Beatles comparisons that pepper every Wilco review ever written; Yankee Hotel Foxtrot evokes Steely Dan, the Eagles, Wings, Derek & The Dominos and Traffic. The slightly disconnected, piano-led "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," is delicately laced with noise, whistles and percussive clutter, like some great grandson of "A Day in the Life." The muted, "Kamera" strums along darkly with acoustic and electric guitars; the twittering electronics in the background don't quite mitigate the tune's comparability to the clever and precise (though now largely neglected) jazz-inflected blues-rock of Dire Straits' stunning debut.

但是，尽管所有关于终极嘻哈影响的谈论——Jim O'Rourke、krautrock和The Conet Project——Yankee Hotel Foxtrot仍然在7月4日周末让人联想到一个经典的摇滚广播电台。 这不仅仅是将Byrds/滚石乐队/披头士乐队进行交替的比较——Wilco的每一篇评论都充斥着这种比较; Yankee Hotel Foxtrot让人想起了Steely Dan、Eagles、Wings、Derek & The Dominos和Traffic。略微脱节的钢琴主导的《I Am Trying to Break Your Heart》细腻地夹杂着噪音、口哨声和撞击性的杂乱，就像《A Day in the Life》中的某个曾孙。静音的“Kamera”与原声吉他和电吉他一起模糊地弹奏；背景中嗡嗡响的电子音乐并没有完全减弱这首曲子与Dire Straits令人惊叹的首张专辑中巧妙而精确(尽管现在很大程度上被忽视了)的爵士蓝调摇滚的可同性。

The cone-filtered and anthemic country psychedelia of "War on War" could have been jammed straight out of a hot "Bertha" at a 1973 Grateful Dead show. The violin and coked-up country lounge of "Jesus, etc." recalls some mythical seventies in true love and cigarettes. The sharp, stuttering guitar solo that rips open "I'm the Man Who Loves You" could have come directly out of Neil Young's hollow body electric circa Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. For all its aural depth and layering, Yankee Hotel tends to come off as earnest as yesteryear's FM radio. Wilco gets the benefit of O'Rourke's gift for cutting straight to the guts of every style, without the burden of his trademark contempt for the subject matter at hand.

“War on War”这首经过锥形过滤的、颂歌般的乡村迷幻音乐，简直可以直接从1973年感恩而死乐队(Grateful Dead)的演出上的热门歌曲“Bertha”中摘取。小提琴声和“Jesus, etc”的乡村酒吧间里的可卡因声，让人想起了真爱和香烟中神秘的70年代。《I’m The Man Who Loves You》开头尖锐、断断续续的吉他独奏可能直接出自尼尔·杨(Neil Young)的空心体电曲《Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere》。对于所有的听觉深度和层次，Yankee Hotel Foxtrot往往给人的感觉就像去年的调频广播一样真诚。Wilco受益于O’Rourke的天赋，他直接切入每一种风格的精髓，而没有他对手头主题的标志性蔑视的负担。

And Tweedy seems to be coming into his own as a lyricist. I still wince when I hear him sing, "I know you don't talk much but you're such a good talker," on Being There. The brooding introspection of Summerteeth made for a handful of elegant lyrics, most notably the skeletal beauty of "She's a Jar," where "she begs me not to miss her" returns as the stinging "she begs me not to hit her," transforming a wistful love song into something gently bruising. But on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tweedy becomes what I think he always was: an optimist and a romantic.

Tweedy似乎以作词家的身份进入了自己的领域。当我听到他在那里唱“我知道你不怎么说话，但你是个很会说话的人”在专辑“Being There”。Summerteeth沉思的自省创造了一些优雅的歌词，最引人注目的是“She's a Jar”的骷髅之美，其中“她恳求我不要错过她”的刺痛声“她恳求我不要打她”回归，将一首渴望的情歌变成了温柔的淤青。但在Yankee Hotel Foxtrot上，Tweedy变成了我认为他一直的样子：一个乐观主义者和一个浪漫主义者。

His declaration of wanting to salute "the ashes of American flags," is less cynicism than, perhaps, the devoted liberal's nostalgia for an honest patriotism (check out the array of properly lefty links at wilcoworld.com if you don't believe me). "All my lies are always wishes," he sings, "I know I would die if I could come back new." In "Jesus, etc.," there's a cascading simplicity when he sings, "Tall buildings shake, voices escape, singing sad, sad songs to two chords/ Strung down your cheeks, bitter melodies turning your orbit around." Sad, celestial and lovely. The final declaration on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is one of abiding dedication: "I've got reservations 'bout so many things but not about you." There isn't a truer word to be had.

他宣称要向“美国国旗灰烬”致敬，这与其说是犬儒主义，不如说是忠诚的自由主义者对诚实爱国主义的怀念(如果你不相信我，可以在wilcoworld.com上找到一系列的左派链接)。“我所有的谎言都是愿望，”他唱道，“我知道如果我能重新回来，我会死的。”在“Jesus etc”中，当他唱“高楼摇晃，声音逃逸，唱着悲伤的歌到两个和弦/串在你的脸颊上，苦涩的旋律转动你的轨道。”悲伤、天性、可爱。关于Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的最终宣言是持久的奉献精神之一：“我对很多事情都有保留，但不是关于你。”没有更真实的词可以拥有。

On Summerteeth, Tweedy yowled about "speakers speaking in code" and I thought of that refrain from "I Can't Stand It" when I first heard the words "yankee-hotel-foxtrot" uttered by the disembodied English woman on the sublimely creepy box-set of shortwave radio transmissions, The Conet Project, which is sampled sporadically throughout this record. And in a deeper, more deliberate world, perhaps we could trace that thread to unravel the secret wonder of Wilco's new album. But I don't think there's any secret; and I don't think there's any code. Beneath the great story of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, there are all the tropes and symbols and coincidences of a little mythology; but under that is a fantastic rock record. And why tell you? You all already knew this.

在Summerteeth上，Tweedy对“用代码说话的扬声器”大喊大叫，当我第一次听到无形的英国妇女在极其令人毛骨悚然的短波无线电传输盒式The Conet Project上说出“Yankee-hotel-foxtrot”这个词时，我想到了“I Can't Stand It”中的副歌，在整个唱片中零星地采样。在一个更深刻、更深思熟虑的世界里，也许我们可以追踪这条线索来解开Wilco新专辑的秘密奇迹。但我不认为有任何秘密；也我不认为有任何代码。（也没有任何密码）。在Yankee Hotel Foxtrot的伟大故事下面，有一个小神话的所有比喻、符号和巧合；但下面是一张梦幻般的摇滚唱片。为什么要告诉你？你们都已经知道了。