Kitty Empire 

Washed Out: Within and Without – review

Washed Out's blissful mellowness recalls the Beloved, but flirts with inconsequentiality, writes Kitty Empire
  
  


Washed Out's 2009 EP, "Life of Leisure", led the vogue for what was known in US blog circles as "chillwave" – a bucolic, digital remembering of the poppy dance music of yesteryear, as heard through a fat wad of gauze. This full-length offering from Atlantan Ernest Greene and his newly expanded band is altogether less funky than its predecessor and instead favours a warm, Balearic wistfulness. There is absolutely nothing wrong with songs such as "Amor Fati" and how they recall the Beloved; and much right about the way "Echoes" closes on a stereo pan of distantly skittering pellets. But such blissed-out mellowness brings with it the impression of inconsequentiality, an airy torpor the tunes on Within and Without struggle to overcome.

 

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