Washed Out

You can slap just about any label you want on Ernest Greene; whatever you call it, the music he makes as Washed Out is just too good to affix to any trend. Emerging in the summer of 2009 as one of the brightest lights of the nascent chillwave scene—or glo-fi, hypnagogic pop, what-have-you—Greene provided perhaps the sound’s platonic ideal, a hazy, floaty, very unhurried take on new wave pop, lush and evocative and long on atmosphere.

Greene, a relative newcomer to music-making by the time his first tracks hit the Internet only a year or so ago, flips obscure disco-pop and throbby synth funk into a kind of screwed-and-chopped version of itself, an easy, very groovy late-afternoon, three-margarita-deep feeling that his peers—many of whom popped up after Greene’s effortless music first dropped—can only hope to emulate. His Life of Leisure EP, released to an almost instant sellout last fall by Mexican Summer, could very well be providing the soundtrack to anything hot and lazy for years to come. In between updating his similarly gorgeous photo blog and getting himself hitched, Greene’s been plenty busy working up plenty of new material, and live—either by himself or bolstered by Brooklyn rockers Small Black—he’s grown a rep for adding unexpected dimensions to what, even this early in his career, already feels like a signature sound.

Pack your romantic mind, and don’t skimp on the sunscreen; it’s gonna be a hot one. —Paul Thompson