Sound Check Music Blog

I remember once, when I was a dumb little shit, trying to imagine how whales in the ocean had sex.  For me, at this impressionable age, this was an important question.  I devoured any reading material related to whales and other sexual sea life.  The fascination, wasn’t however perverse.  I was simply interested in the sounds, the ecstatic sonic conjoining of two massive creatures.  When it gets really quiet at night, I can somehow hear this:  a constant, watery rhythm, and the exchange of muffled cries.  Of course, by this time of night, I’m usually sedated into a state drooling, half sleep, sending sick messages to models and other pretty girls.

This state of nocturnal being, the hearing of screwing whales and such, was the precise feeling I got when listening to Washed Out’s Within and Without.  As a total piece, this album is thick with atmosphere and mystery.  Most of the songs bleed into each other and can be–at first listen– undistinguishable from the next.  The first track “Eyes Be Closed” starts off with a pulsing synth that instantly reminded me of fog, frosted mirrors and the smell of laundry detergent.  It is a sound that cleanses you, makes you feel new in some way.

Washed Out-”Eyes Be Closed”

This sound is never, in any way, original or alien–but that’s not the point. So, I’ll save the comparison to other bands( Cocteau Twins) for later. Washed Out (aka Ernest Greene) isn’t the first musical act to use a shit load of reverb and echo to bring mediocre songs to mystical heights; however, Washed Out is the first act to do it effectively.  At its best, songs like “Amor Fati” and “Far Away” had me feeling pleasantly drugged and sensually aware.  The orgasmic dream, however is “You and I.”  ”You and I” is a special song that ranks as the most sweeping and powerfully sexy pieces of work I’ve heard since Sade’s music in the 80s.  This song really did remind me of whales having sex in a vast, moonlit ocean.

Washed Out-”Amor Fati”

Washed Out-”Far Away”

Washed Out-”You and I”

It took a few weeks of living with this album to finally grasp the feeling.  I wonder how anyone can listen to this just once and grasp a thing.  The music is so dense with atmosphere and the vocals (which are totally undecipherable) give little meaning.  All I was left with was traces of the most impressionable collection of songs and whales.