Music Review: Washed Out, “Within and Without”

Posted by staticblog

on July 13, 2011M at 10:28 am

Rating: 86

In lesser hands, chillwave can veer perilously close to lifestyle music — atmospheric sound programming to match midcentury modern furnishings in high-end hotels. But much like the best work by Neon Indian, Memory Tapes and their hip-hop brethren in The Weeknd, Washed Out’s full-length debut, “Within and Without,” grafts the gauzy nostalgia of the genre onto rock-solid melodic foundations for this unrelentingly beautiful collection. Ernest Greene’s one-man laptop project builds on the comparatively lo-fi sounds of his previous EP thanks to Ben Allen’s expansive production and Greene’s infallible sense of mood and melody.

As the cover image suggests, “Within and Without” establishes a romantic through-line on its first track, “Eyes Be Closed,” with Greene layering vocals over vintage synthesizers, the mix becoming more lush and ornate as the song progresses. The approach reaches its melodic peak on “Amor Fati,” a Latin phrase used frequently in Friedrich Nietzsche’s work meaning “love of one’s fate,” in which Greene steps up the tempo even as he extols the virtues of passivity. And on “You and I,” he finds the perfect vocal foil in Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, whose seductive voice intertwines with Greene’s in seamless harmony.

Lists of “bedroom albums” typically include classics such as Roxy Music’s “Avalon,” and “Within and Without” suggests a modern take on Bryan Ferry lothario music — that is, if Ferry had not remained in a kind of luxurious musical stasis for the past 30 years. Fittingly, Washed Out caps off the album with the nearly percussion-free “A Dedication,” a swirl of synthesized woodwinds, piano and echoing keyboards providing a fitting denouement for this hypnotic after-hours soundscape.

— Lang

Categorized under:

Music