CAREER VEERS風格逆轉
Two respected indie artists forsake the comforts of home. By TIM PRITCHARD
兩位備受尊崇的獨立樂手打破一貫作風。撰文： Tim Pritchard
DAN AUERBACH SPENT the early 2000s tweaking Delta blues into a grittier, more aggressive brand of garage rock more befitting his industrial Akron, Ohio, surroundings. He formed The Black Keys with drummer Patrick Carney. Five raucous albums between 2002 and 2008 followed.
But in 2010, Auerbach traded in Akron’s industrial ennui for a brighter setting: Nashville, Tennessee. Listening to his new solo album, Waiting on a Song, recorded at his Nashville studio, it sounds like the bluesman is loving life in the home of country music.
‘Songs don’t grow on trees. You gotta pick ’em out of the breeze,’ he sings on the title track. Given his – well, breezy – delivery, and the song’s sweet strums and bouncy bassline, it seems there’s a good few floating around in the Nashville air. Malibu Man and Undertow are smooth neo-soul; Never in My Wildest Dreams and Show Me are folksier. With Shine On Me, Auerbach delivers a punchy pop song with not a blue note to be heard.
Following Fleet Foxes’ critically acclaimed Helplessness Blues (2011), singer Robin Pecknold decided he, too, needed a change. He traded in the blustery Pacific Northwest for New York’s buzzy Lower East Side. Perhaps an odd choice for a self-described ‘anxious person’, but as F Scott Fitzgerald wrote: ‘One should be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.’
This quote comes from Fitzgerald’s essay The Crack-Up, which Pecknold took for the name of the new Fleet Foxes album. The 11-track indie-folk album – the first since his move, and their most ambitious and complex to date – covers that transition from despair to hope in the dramatic musical shifts of songs like Third of May/Ōdaigahara, and I Am All That I Need/Arroyo Seco/Thumbprint Scar.
‘ Whenever you run, you see all you’ve left behind,’ Pecknold sings on On the Other Ocean ( January/June). Auerbach might have found a sweeter scene in Nashville, but perhaps the distance between coasts was what Pecknold needed to overcome his creative and existential block.
Dan Auerbach於 2000年代初把三角洲藍調改頭換面，成為更硬橋硬馬的車庫搖滾，跟其出身地俄亥俄州阿克倫的工業氣息更相配。他與鼓手Patrick Carney組成樂隊The Black Keys之後，於2002 至 2008 年間推出了五張震耳欲聾的專輯。
可是到了 2010 年， Dan Auerbach 又將阿克倫乏味的工業風格換上田納西州納什維爾的清新曲風。聽著他在納什維爾自己的錄音室灌錄的全新個人專輯《Waiting on a Song》時，你會發現這位藍調歌手已愛上在鄉謠音樂之鄉的生活了。
他在專輯內的同名歌曲中哼著「Songs don’t grow on trees, You gotta pick ’ em out of the breeze」（歌曲不會長在樹上，你必須於微風中擷取），唱來調子輕快，甜美的結他音色和跳脫的低音和弦會令你以為這就是納什維爾常見的風格。〈Malibu Man〉和〈Undertow〉則是流暢的新騷靈音樂；〈Never in My Wildest Dreams〉和〈Show Me〉卻又充滿民謠的味道；而Dan Auerbach 以強勁的流行曲風演繹〈Shine On Me〉，更不帶半點藍調痕跡。
樂隊 Fleet Foxes 在 2011年推出專輯《Helplessness Blues》大獲好評後，主音Robin Pecknold亦認為應該作一點轉變。他從經常狂風大作的太平洋西北岸移居到熱鬧的紐約下東城區。此舉或許與自稱「焦慮不安」的他格格不入，但正如美國作家史考特．費茲傑羅寫道︰「人們總是決意將不可能的事變成可能。」
這句話摘自史考特．費茲傑羅的文章〈The Crack-Up〉， Robin Pecknold 便以此作為 Fleet Foxes 新專輯的名字。收錄11首獨立民謠的專輯是他遷居後的首作，亦是樂隊至今最進取和複雜的作品，其中〈Third of May / Ōdaigahara〉、〈I Am All That I Need /Arroyo Seco/ Thumbprint Scar〉等歌曲，以跟昔日截然不同的曲風訴說從絕望過渡至希望的過程。
且聽Robin Pecknold在〈On the Other Ocean ( January/ June )〉的其中一 句 歌詞：「Whenever you run, you see all you’ve left behind」（每次逃跑時，你總看到身後遺下的一切）。Dan Auerbach也許在納什維爾尋獲了甜美的生活；但 Robin Pecknold卻需要跨過東西兩岸之間的差異，才能克服創作和存在的難關。