Washed Out - Paracosm

It’s easy - and at times necessary - to consider context when thinking about Washed Out. The moment his debut ‘Within and Without’ arrived was the moment a movement ended. It was the very same swelling of change that Ernest Greene began. But all the same it was one that lost its focus in a process of desaturation. Its emotive appeal had drowned, quite literally, in a sea of bands and producers trying to replicate the breathless charge of Greene’s early demos and ‘Life of Leisure’ EP.

But the remarkable aspect of Washed Out, and especially ‘Paracosm’, is just how far removed it is from context. Any context, even. Its fairground, fairytale concept is one you’d draw way back to the 1960s. It’s fantastical. It’s the iconic image of Mickey Mouse waving magic dust at his mop and buckets. It’s not the vacuous, ‘take-a-toke-and-relax-maaan’ vibe Ernest’s music was so ruthlessly pegged in with. And although it’s imaginative and undoubtedly about escapism, above all things, it’s a clever summation of a sense of adventure.

Greene’s come on a great deal since his early days of steering old-school disco samples through a time machine. He built his own studio for ‘Paracosm’, played pretty much every part that makes up the record. And how. Moments on this album are tailor-made, every single inch, to appeal to the senses. Layer upon layer of acoustics slather the rest of each song’s goings on. Washed Out retains its sense of bittersweet melancholy, but on this occasion it sounds complete; something the amateurs can’t come close to.

‘All I Know’ is the richest of the album’s recordings. Its heady strum could easily open a U2 record, it sounds so damned refined. But its all-encompassing bulk is surrounded by swirling atmospherics, abstract links that remind you of the guy’s ambition. ‘Falling Back’ also steers through a risky route between casual anthemia and something meaningful. Often Greene’s vocals are of such a kind, they tend to float between songs, until you’re drifting into a gorgeous slumber. That’ll feel like the purpose of the album for some. For others it’ll be a grating, repeated offence.

There are very few records where you can get by simply on how sweeping and plain beautiful it sounds. Washed Out never really had an audience in mind. It’s a guy’s conscience creeping into the foreground; one concerned occasionally with simple, sorry thoughts, but for the most part distracted by nature and escape. ‘Paracosm’ stands out because it’s a clever, perfectly executed refining of these distractions. So many stumble when expressing something this obvious and musically abstract.Washed Out himself stumbled first time round, even. Here he creates a fuller piece, totally unconcerned with its context and its audience. Hence why it excels.