“我不会成为你的梦中情人”，在这张她最大胆的专辑里，Claire Boucher 在最后一首歌"Butterfly" 里唱道。当然她可能只是在扭扭捏捏，因为对于很多人来说，她就是那个梦中的女孩。
"I'll never be your dream girl," sings Claire Boucher on "Butterfly", the final song on Art Angels, her most audacious album to date. Perhaps she's just being coy, because for many she is exactly that.

在女性也能作为流行音乐主创的年代，Boucher（Grimes）发行的闪耀的作品也为这种趋势添上了一笔。她用专辑/现场中宏大的观念、强劲的节奏招呼大家来到舞池上。她对本可以轻松招架的极简主义表示抗拒（指Grimes的音乐是复杂化的）。
In the age of the female pop auteur, Boucher's work as Grimes is a glorious addition to the canon, someone who beckons us to the dancefloor with big ideas and bigger beats, and resists simplistic notions of who she can be on a record or a stage.

《Art Angels》让过时的性别歧视寿终正寝。流行音乐行业中，性别主义者认为女性是建筑材料、是未经修饰的框架，而男性将用才华赋予它们生命。因为女性的行业角色是完美整洁的、在某种程度上是不真实的。这14首歌是Boucher 心血的证据，是清清楚楚的流行风景线，是无可辩驳的“她”的作品，邀请着世界的加入。
Art Angels is a gilded coffin nail to outmoded sexist arguments that women in pop are constructed products, a mere frame for male producers' talents—that because their music is immaculate, they are somehow not authentic. These 14 tracks are evidence of Boucher's labor and an articulation of a pop vision that is incontrovertibly hers, inviting the wider world in.

Grimes 是Boucher 的终极“粉丝学者女孩”人格：一个热爱Mariah、 Katy Perry、K-pop并且把自己的音乐元素从这些已有的音乐中扩展开来，靠着对于合成器&虚无世界的可能性的着迷走到了今天这一步，从而最终给了自己心中的“Art Angels”一对翅膀。
Grimes shows that Boucher is the ultimate fangirl study: a D.I.Y. musician whose love of Mariah, Katy Perry, and K-pop has expanded her palette, driven by her fascination with the possibilities of the synthetic and unreal, and ultimately given wings to Art Angels.

在这里，她把“她所崇拜的流行音乐”与“她能做到的流行音乐”拉近了距离。Boucher称这张专辑由两个部分组成，确实，这些曲目可以简单地按照“夜开始时的舞池即兴”、“夜结束时的舞池即兴”排列好。
Here, she closes the gap between the pop she's idolized and the pop she is capable of. Boucher has claimed that the record has two halves, and indeed, the songs line up most easily into beginning- and end-of-the-night dancefloor jams.

对于“夜开始时的舞池即兴”，明亮、烦躁的"Kill V. Maim"是一个典型的例子。拉拉队一样的反复呼喊、掀翻屋顶的节奏，都结束于强劲的庆祝似的vocal fry呐喊（气泡音/低音）。
The former is exemplified by the bright, anxious "Kill V. Maim", with its mocking cheerleader chant over blown-out beats and Boucher working both ends of her register in a propulsive celebration of vocal fry.

"Flesh Without Blood"也是一样，这首歌是2015年最甜蜜的玩意，强调了Boucher不止能发出在专辑《Visions》里有机会展示的声音。这首歌是Boucher 在吃 Miley打包的午饭，但愿这首歌有无穷无尽的体育馆EDM remixes.
Same for "Flesh Without Blood", which is the sweetest ****-off of 2015, one that highlights that there is much more to Boucher's voice than Visions ever had a chance to reveal. The song is Boucher eating the lunch that Miley packed, may it be #blessed with infinite stadium-EDM remixes.

后《Art Angels》时代，大概不会有人拒绝Boucher写的歌：这是一张专辑，也是一张简历。一个写下了"California"的人，一定也可以为“marquee Nashville” 写出跨界的热单吧。"Easily" 也提示未来她可能会与Kesha共同写歌。
Post-Art Angels, it's hard to imagine anyone will reject a Boucher-penned cut: This is an album, but it's also a resume, and someone who made "California" could certainly be making crossover hits for any marquee Nashville name, while "Easily" suggests that Kesha co-writes should be in Boucher's future.

而“夜结束时的舞池即兴”的编排，展现了Grimes作为制作人的精湛和工整。"Realiti"、 "Venus Fly" with Janelle Monáe, 、 "Butterfly" 让她和另一群音乐人比肩。确实，她像Monáe和 Annie Clark一样都是音乐的主创，但是纯粹从流行音乐制作人的角度，她娴熟和聪明得像是在 Top 40行列，像是Greg Kurstin 或者 Diplo。
The late-night closers and their arrangements are where Boucher shows her mastery and discipline as a producer. "Realiti", "Venus Fly" with Janelle Monáe, and "Butterfly" give her a new set of peers: Sure, she's there with collaborator Monáe and Annie Clark as an auteur, but purely as a pop producer she's as deft and clever as anyone we consider a master of Top 40 craft—be it Greg Kurstin or Diplo.

她的音乐充满细节：稀奇古怪的节奏闪现、藏得很深而只出现一次的采样，可爱到有毒的90年代流行吉他。歌曲总是以意想不到的方式开始，却会用我们所期待的pop该有的方式逐渐效果爆炸，令人满足。"Butterfly"是带着亚低音而来，宣告永夜的mutant bruiser（超级英雄梗，单声道的节奏让它听起来像是怪异峡谷版的Kylie Minogue的 "Can't Get You Out of My Head"
The songs are graced with small details: curious skeets of beats, buried samples that only appear once, toxically cute '90s pop guitar. The songs build in unexpected ways, but explode and gratify in the way we hope pop always will. "Butterfly" is a let-tonight-last-forever mutant bruiser with roiling sub-bass, the chorus's side-chained pulse making it like an uncanny valley version of Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head".

所有的一切让我们觉得，Boucher展开了一场真真正正的再发明潮流，并且为Top 40的目标而来，却又对这两件事有所怀疑。《Art Angels》是《Visions》的进化体。如果你过滤掉后者的一些朦胧的处理，你会发现两者结构的相似性。Boucher可辨识、很熟悉，但是比在 "Oblivion"中更为宏大、音域更宽、更有深度。这张专辑突出了她、取样了她，将她的形象放大，形成主调和复调。
All of this might seem as if Boucher has fashioned a whole-cloth reinvention and is gunning for the Top 40, but neither of these things feel true. Art Angels is a natural progression from Visions; if you strained out some of the processing and murk of the latter, you would find these structures lurking. Boucher's voice is recognizable and familiar, but it's bigger and has more range and depth than on "Oblivion". This album foregrounds her, samples her, piles tracks of her half a dozen high to form melodies and countermelodies.

《Art Angels》和其他Top 40音乐最大的不同之处在于，它不是情歌。它是史诗般的女性主义者的假期自助餐，而且经过了匿名的评论家、音乐界小人物的加工。
One of the most notable and striking differences between Art Angels and its Top 40 kin is that these are not love songs. The album is an epic holiday buffet of tendentious feminist ****-off, with second helpings for anonymous commenters and music industry blood-suckers.

《Visions》之后，她和名利之间充满矛盾、令人眩晕关系，似乎把她引向了“什么都不在意的”自由境地。"Kill V. Maim"中出现了暴怒，和些许随意的厌男症 ("I'm only a man/ I do what I can,")
Her conflicted, vertiginous relationship with the fast fame that followed Visions seems to have led her to a place of DGAF liberation. Some songs, like "Kill V. Maim", course with a thrilling rage, even a casual misandry. ("I'm only a man/ I do what I can," she sings on the hook).

目前为止，《Art Angels》最刺激的地方在于Boucher想要被被听到、被看到的十足的意志、完全的无畏。她不再是大家在2012年所称呼的‘人形 Tumblr’（带有某种羞辱意味），现在的她是‘人形zeitgeist（时代思潮）’，重新界定了流行音乐的二进制、边界线，迫使我们跟上她的脚步。
Yet, what's most exciting within Art Angels is the sheer will and fearlessness of Boucher's fight to be heard and seen on her own terms. She's not a human Tumblr, as we called her (somewhat humiliatingly) in 2012; she's a human zeitgeist, redrawing all the binaries and boundaries by which we define pop music and forcing us to come along.