Washed Out – Notes from a Quiet Life

Description

The music of Washed Out has always levitated over a timeless frontier. You cansense it in his immersive, amorphous vocals, the expansive soundscapes, the wistfulstorytelling. Its a sweet spot where, says its creative force, Ernest Greene, any sort of association or memory from the past can transport you instantly. I love that.

Greenes transcendent output has earned him the moniker of Godfather ofChillwave by Pitchfork and a co-sign from Portlandia, which borrowed his track, FeelIt All Around, for its utopian theme song. His latest, Notes from a Quiet Life arrivesafter delivering more than a decade of distinct and disparate creative re-imaginationsat a remarkably high level (five albums, two EPs). Notes is bold in its intuitiveness:Greene has left the treadmill of music-as-a-business, instead letting his artisticinterests lead the way. Each album, says Green, who also paints and sculpts, is a world-building exercise.

The Georgia native left Atlanta in 2021 to move back to the countryside he knewgrowing up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today he is preoccupied withthe universe of wonder in the reality around him. He named the former horse farm hemoved to Endymion (after the pastoral John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd
– its opening line: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever), and it has shaped all that hes
created there, from his music to his albums creative direction to his planned largescale visual-art experiments.

Ive read that every five, maybe 10, years, youre practically a different person – likeliterally, on a cellular level, Greene explains. The things that youre going through
will end up changing you, and youre kind of a different person. This album is areflection of that. Experimenting with painting and sculpture helps my music. They
influence each other. That was a kind of realization for me. I dont want to look back
on my life one day, and be like, Oh, it was all about maximizing productivity, he
says. I want to enjoy this.

That purity of vision is what makes Notes from a Quiet Life so potent. Its the first
album Greene wholly self-produced, with some mixing assistance from NathanBoddy (James Blake, Mura Masa) and David Wrench (Caribou, Florence + theMachine). Early in my career, I had a lack of technical skill, and there were somethings I wasnt 100% enthusiastic about, he says, noting Jean-Michel Basquiatsdistinct, self-driven method as an inspiration. Something that I was looking for was…I didnt want any illusion of anyone elses influences. I wanted to see this through tothe end. And honestly, that was a big challenge.

Illustrating that, Greenes list of influences for Notes from a Quiet Life are mostly
sculpture icons: minimalist legend Donald Judd, abstract expressionist Cy Twombly,
and modernists Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. Of the latter, he observes, The
majority of his working life was spent on his country estate, and he wasnt living a
cosmopolitan lifestyle. He was focused on just making good work, you know.

Tracklist

Waking Up
Say Goodbye
Got Your Back
Hardest Part
A Sign
Second Sight
Running Away
Wait on You
Wondrous Life
Letting Go