（搬运+翻译）Review by Pitchfork onSufjan Stevens' No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross
Once again, Sufjan Stevens is finger-picking and whisper-singing to guide us towards cold moments of solitude and reverence. It's comforting to hear his voice again, like it's inches from the ear. "No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross" seems like a reflexive pendulum swing away from everything his challenging Age Of Adz stood for. No more high-concept art statements, just old-fashioned songwriting; a man playing guitar on a stool in the corner of a café. But consider the three elements of this song: his voice, his acoustic guitar, and some white noise underneath. The last one is important. The white noise is not an affected tape hiss, but rather the fan of an air conditioner, running on high, blasting into Stevens' apartment.
Sufjan Stevens一如既往用他标志性的拨弦，喃喃吟唱，带我们向着敬畏，进入寒意四起的独处时光。他的声音，听起来还是那样舒服，宛如耳边低语。"No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross"和他之前实验性专辑“Age Of Adz”像是一面钟里两根反向的指针，往不同方向走去 。"No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross"里，传统的老式唱作代替了复杂概念的艺术表达。咖啡厅一角，一人，一椅，一吉他，而已。但细想，组成歌曲的部分，他的声音，原声吉他，做底的白噪音，三者中最重要的其实是白噪音。它并不是录音带发出的嘶嘶声，而是空调扇叶转到最高处，把风涌进Stevens公寓的声音。
"This is not my art project; this is my life," he said of his forthcoming seventh LP, Carrie & Lowell. His choice to record the song with his air conditioner running—to feature it as a character—brings us into his personal world where the specter of his mother and his grieving is circling all around him. It’s silly, sort of, to apply this much gravitas to a household appliance, but it’s what makes this song less of an analog to his earlier work and more to that of Liz Harris’ compositions in (recall the microwave timer she let beep on last year's "Labyrinth"). It creates a domestic space with full transparency. It copies a moment in time without artifice. "No Shade" isn’t an invitation to meditate on Christianity as Stevens offered on *Seven Swans—*it's his view from the gutter after one too many tests of faith. These three elements in the song are simply his life, which, suddenly, create some of his best art.
“它不是我创作的艺术作品，它是我的生活，”他谈起即将发表的新LP （黑胶唱片）Carrie & Lowell，这样说道。他录下空调运转的声音，把它当作歌曲伴奏的一部分，其实是想带我们走近他的私人世界，在那个世界里，母亲的亡灵和他的痛苦笼罩着他。某种意义上，用家用电器的声音去展示如此严肃的事，是不明智的，但这也使得这首歌不太像他早期作品，反而更像Liz Harris用Grouper艺名创作的作品（因为怀念过去用微波炉的时光，Liz把嘟嘟声放进了去年发布的歌曲"Labyrinth"里）。这样的声音真实还原了那段时光，使得我们可以窥见他的家庭生活。"No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross"与之前的专辑Seven Swans不同，没有对基督教思考，没有经过信仰重重考验后他的一些想法。歌里三个部分，仅是他普通生活的反映，却意外成了他最好的艺术表达之一。
