Release Date: July 12, 2011
Beach. Wave. Bedroom. Nostalgia.
Now that the requisite signifiers are out of the way, Washed Out’s new album can be celebrated for what it is: nine songs of glowing, smeared harmony, with more replay value than the peers to whom they will inevitably be compared (see below!).
Within and Without is meant to be listened to on its own terms, distanced from stale scene associations.
It’s difficult to believe this is Ernest Greene’s first full-length under the name Washed Out, following a smattering of singles and last year’s Life of Leisure EP. For his official debut, Within and Without is the type of vague, wispy title befitting a release with few clear lyrics and a sustained mood of cotton-balled euphoria. Look at the song titles: “Echoes,” “Soft,” “Far Away.” Here, nothing is concrete or direct; rough edges have been buffed out, and those buffs get another wax coating. Greene gives his words a similar whitewash treatment; lyrically, he’s got his cards tattooed to his chest. In an age where everyone quotes everything (repeatedly), Washed Out opts out. Ambiguity is the MO of Within and Without, and it’s refreshing now more than ever, when everything is spelled out lest the hunched-over masses tune out.
Greene is more subdued here than he was on Life of Leisure. Compare album covers: Life was all beach and no bummers, while the often-slower Within and Without is more focused on fostering a bedsheet-level personal connection in an increasingly impersonal world. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the few discernable words on Within and Without are second-person pronouns.
A lot of pop music is written about every you, me and us possible, so what makes Greene’s creations so different? For one, he stands out from his contemporaries – contrast and compare to the earthy funk leanings of recent Toro Y Moi, for example. His one-man-band peers are invariably placed in the context of a bedroom, on top of an old mattress and in front of a laptop, but their music usually conveys a sort of nonspecific communal feel. Within and Without, on the other hand, feels almost completely isolated.
This is music for long drives with everything to think about, for meditation through big headphones, or after the door closes on a hard goodbye.
These songs also feel instantly comfortable and familiar, capable of triggering feelings and memories as disparate as an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse to the leather-and-ink smell of your dad’s office from when you were a kid. This is powerful stuff, meant to be played through expensive headphones with lots of time and little distraction.
There are musical memories, too. Check the fluid, pulsating beat of the album’s throat-clearer “Eyes Be Closed,” where tumbling drums right out of Phil Collins playbook accent jarring synth washes and Greene’s unintelligible lyrics. “Soft” has a remote bloodline to Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime,” the nauseous spinning keyboards underscoring the music’s airy, weightless quality.
Follow-up “Echoes” works a two-note keyboard line straight out of Ibiza, but the blunted electro belies muffled lyrics that could likely happen anywhere, from Oakland to Oslo. Letting on more than the album’s other tracks, “Amor Fati” finds Greene moaning impressionistic phrases like “Your face/These eyes/The world’s your door to find” before breaking down into waves of ghostly ohhs.
If Within and Without evokes any dominant memory, it’s one from the not-so-distant past. The album drags slightly in the second half, like many 2010 indie releases, but it’s not all a wash on Side Two. “Far Away” is the chillest moment here, a temporary breather of a midpoint after the loaded head trip of what preceded it. Within and Without ends with “A Dedication,” a time-stopping ballad – or at least the basswave equivalent of one – built on dusty piano and a loping trip-hop beat.
Even with few discernable lyrics, it feels as if the album grapples with existentialism instead of reveling in it. Was the past (namely, your past) really that great? Does time heal wounds or merely fog them? Within and Without offers no easy answers, suggesting there aren’t any. And maybe that’s OK for once.
Washed Out – Within and Without Tracklist:
- “Eyes Be Closed”
- “Echoes”
- “Amor Fati”
- “Soft”
- “Far Away”
- “Before”
- “You and I”
- “Within and Without”
- “A Dedication”
