10/22 - Washed Out

Nope, the title of the blog is not actually a description of how my brain has felt for the last month or so - and apologies to anyone who has missed me. Especially if you were trying to run me over with your car - because there were probably a few days I was totally ready for that in lieu of computer generated eyestrain and the carpal tunnels that goes along with typing somewhere in the ballpark of 50,000 words in a month. Hey, guess what? Turns out that writing a book is fucking hard! What!?!

But, this blog isn't really about me - not directly anyway - so let's get to the meat of it, shall we?

In the grand tradition of one guy with a mixer, a synth, and a drum machine calling themselves a band (what's with that anyway?), Washed Out is a fella named Ernest Greene from Georgia. He plays what that clever Pitchfork calls "bedroom synth," another term that I'm not I know the meaning of. I'll take a stab at it:

Bedroom synth: n. Music played by one guy with the name of a band that sounds like one guy with the name of a band playing into a microphone muffled with sweat socks, filtered through pixie dust and Sunday Hangovers and teeming underneath with really pretty layered melodies and soothing vocals.

Because here's the deal - Washed Out (and Memory Tapes, and Toro y Moi - two bands always mentioned with Washed Out) has really lush, gorgeous vocals that are buried under all that bedroom mess. The production is pretty low fi, but the songs are, kids listen to grandma here, a hell of a lot like what we used to call "shoegaze" or "dream pop" back when people made the same kind of sounds with guitar pedals.

In fact, if I was half asleep on a cocktail of codeine and Tylenol PM, I'd swear on my mother that "Feel It All Around" was some Slowdive song I'd never heard. Which, if you ask me, is actually a GOOD thing. England, apparently, practically ran Slowdive out of the country with ire and hatred, but down in sleepy old Austin, Texas in a dorm that looked like a prison, there were a whole lot of us ladies who thought they were pretty damn great.

And after a few listens, it starts to feel like the through-a-sweat-sock sound over all those vocals is really just a ruse to get you to bend your ear RCA-like a little closer to the speaker and go, "What are you whispering to me, you sensitive boy with the name of a band?" And your reward isn't small for doing so. It's actually pretty great.

Washed Out - you sound a little like Slowdive. And then sometimes you sound kind of like OMD covering Howard Jones (yeah, I said Howard. Jones.). You are a great soundtrack to a long bath. And I like you.