Washed Out is Not Washed Up

               Ernest Greene (better known as the first chillwaver) decided the waves needed to get a bit chiller: he’s announced the release of his first album. As his music is so heavily focused on the summer, the July 12^th release date on Sub Pop makes sense. Hopefully, just as the summer begins to drag on, we’ll have his sweet “With and Without” album to give lazy afternoons a better soundtrack.

                I can’t express the joy I have at reporting such good news. Forever has gone by since chillwave began with Ernest, a mild-mannered librarian from Perry, Georgia. He seduced us with spaced-out vocals and reverb, so much reverb. Reverb got reverbed, up to the point where you wondered the origin of such dreamy sounds. 

                Singles have been Washed Out’s stock and trade. Thankfully most of the album’s track list appears to be brand-new material. Having an album consist of nothing but a collection of EPs always feels lazy to me, Panda Bear, Uffie, and Real Estate fell into that trap. Obviously I feel dramatically different emotions regarding those three albums, but I do admit to enjoying a surprise.

                Washed Out doesn’t exactly seem terribly interested in surprises. In fact, the biggest surprise I could hear from Washed Out would be a continuation of his old sound, the sound that introduced “Portlandia” on IFC (It’s All Around You). Lately a great deal of chillwave bands have shunned that moniker, with Toro Y Moi going towards a full band sound, Ducktails taking a more tangible approach, and I’m not sure what Neon Indian will do, but I’m assuming he too will try to move behind his old sound. 

                Right now only one of the nine songs is out (You and I), the Adult Swim single with Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, is the one people have already heard. Everything else will be brand new. I hope the rest of the songs are as good as these five minutes. With further ado, I present to you the song “You and I” available for download. See the below for the rest of the track list:

Washed Out, Within and Without:

1. Eyes Be Closed

2. Echoes

3. Amor Fati

4. Soft

5. Far Away

6. Before

7. You and I

8. Within and Without

9. A Dedication

Obits – I Blame You 5.7

What Obits does is rehash old-timey rock and the roll in the spirit of The Rolling Stones. Now, I’m actually a fan of the Stones. And as much as I want to like these guys, their music feels false to me. Each bit of energy they put in sounds unproductive.

                There’s not a lack of talent here. All of the songs show off the fact that they are veterans from various other bands like Edsel. What I’m concerned about is how forgettable most of this is. Sure, having a guilty pleasure of redundant garage rock isn’t a bad thing. As a result of the glut of these kinds of bands, I feel that the group ought to try harder to leave their own imprint on the music. I can hear the potential for a better approach, for stronger songs.

                Actually I liked parts of the album. Hearing the song “Run” made me re-listen to the album to see if I heard other bits in the album like it. The singer sounds more natural to me for reasons I can’t exactly pinpoint. Everything in this song works for me. “Widow of My Dreams” would be another pick of mine; I like how the bass snakes through the song. It sounds fantastic, and again, I wish the rest of the album did it for me like this one.

                Basically, my problem with this is it rehashes so much from garage rock and various other bands that it fails to create its own identity. I’ve seen them live before, opening for Polvo, and I liked their enthusiasm. At a bar with a beer, this sounds acceptable. But alone, it is hard to focus on such bland sounds. The few times it goes beyond the confines of its adopted sound like for the song “Run” or “Widow of my Dreams”, it is great. Sadly, that isn’t very often. Hopefully they will continue to hone down their sound, as this was their first album together. Here’s hoping.

No Age – Everything in Between 8.6

No Age

Like all No Age releases, this one grew on me. The immediate difference was how the songs felt fuller, both in terms of recording quality and it terms of more conventional structure.  Add that to the length of the album (almost 40 minutes, a record for them) and the word “maturity” comes to mind.

Yes, they have finally reached the next logical step in their evolution. But simply growing older and a bit wiser doesn’t mean that they’ve given up their energy. Rather, this energy is directed in new and exciting ways. “Valley Hump Crush” combines the joys of old No Age with the new focus. It has the same catchiness but there’s even more heart than before. “I don’t want to go to bed/The Sun’s still shining in my head” gives you some idea of the blissed out California world these two still inhabit. But the ideas are better fleshed out than before. Even the chaotic pace of “Fever Dreaming” can’t disguise the fact that they’ve worked harder on this without losing the energy that made them so likable in the first place.

Initially, I worried about this new approach upon first hearing it. For one, the reverb and effects are gone, making it sound more direct. Muscle like that found on “Life Prowler” allows you to actually respect the fact that they could tear down that wall. Also I wondered whether having so much thought behind the emotion would let it succeed on that visceral level. Thankfully, I was wrong after giving it a few more listens. So give this one a bit more tries than their previous work, it does take some getting used to. But ultimately, it is a very enjoyable work. Even the pacing of the ambient interludes works well, with most of them helping to mellow out the latter half of the album, with the album front-loaded with intensity.