Washed Out - Notes from a Quiet Life '2024

Tracks list

The music of Washed Out has always levitated over a timeless frontier. You can
sense it in his immersive, amorphous vocals, the expansive soundscapes, the
wistful storytelling. It’s 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.”

Greene’s transcendent output has earned him the moniker of
“Godfather of Chillwave” by Pitchfork and a co-sign from Portlandia,
which borrowed his track, “Feel It All Around,” for its utopian
theme song. His latest, Notes From a Quiet Life (out June 28, Sub Pop) arrives
after delivering more than a decade of distinct and disparate creative
re-imaginations at 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 artistic interests 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 knew
growing up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today he is preoccupied
with the universe of wonder in the reality around him. He named the former horse
farm he moved 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 he’s created there,
from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large
scale visual-art experiments.

“I’ve read that every five, maybe 10, years, you’re
practically a different person — like literally, on a cellular
level,” Greene explains. “The things that you’re going
through will end up changing you, and you’re kind of a different person.
This album is a reflection of that. Experimenting with painting and sculpture
helps my music. They influence each other. That was a kind of realization for
me. I don’t 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.
It’s the first album Greene wholly self-produced, with some mixing
assistance from Nathan Boddy (James Blake, Mura Masa) and David Wrench (Caribou,
Florence + the Machine). “Early in my career, I had a lack of technical
skill, and there were some things I wasn’t 100% enthusiastic
about,” he says, noting Jean-Michel Basquiat’s distinct,
self-driven method as an inspiration. “Something that I was looking for
was…I didn’t want any illusion of anyone else’s influences.
I wanted to see this through to the end. And honestly, that was a big
challenge.”

Illustrating that, Greene’s 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 wasn’t living a cosmopolitan lifestyle. He was
focused on just making good work, you know?”

Notes from a Quiet Life is Washed Out’s fifth album. 



Tracklist:
1.01 - Washed Out - Waking Up (4:40) 
1.02 - Washed Out - Say Goodbye (4:36) 
1.03 - Washed Out - Got Your Back (4:14) 
1.04 - Washed Out - The Hardest Part (4:06) 
1.05 - Washed Out - A Sign (3:21) 
1.06 - Washed Out - Second Sight (3:42) 
1.07 - Washed Out - Running Away (3:58) 
1.08 - Washed Out - Wait on You (2:56) 
1.09 - Washed Out - Wondrous Life (4:04) 
1.10 - Washed Out - Letting Go (4:28)

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