Washed Out
The project of Ernest Greene of Perry, Georgia, whose 2009 song "Feel It All Around" became the template for chillwave and the theme of Portlandia, and whose Sub Pop albums began with Within and Without in 2011.
A bedroom in Georgia
Ernest Weatherly Greene Jr. was born on October 3, 1982 in Perry, Georgia. He studied at the University of Georgia and took a library-science degree, could not find library work and in June 2009, aged 26 and unemployed, moved back in with his parents near Perry, where he recorded at night on his laptop; Creative Loafing reports he had never planned to release anything. He had made lo-fi rock as Lee Weather in 2008 and dance music with a local band, Bedroom. Blogs found him on MySpace, and Stereogum posted "Feel It All Around" on July 22, 2009, placing him with his friend Toro y Moi.
The EP High Times came out on cassette in a run of 200 on September 9, 2009 on Mirror Universe Tapes, and Life of Leisure followed on Mexican Summer in September 2009 (the dates differ by a week between Wikipedia pages). Pitchfork's Marc Hogan gave Life of Leisure 8.0, calling Greene one of this fledgling aesthetic's most gifted students, and the site later called him the godfather of chillwave. He played the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2010.
Sub Pop and the albums
He signed to Sub Pop in April 2011. Within and Without arrived in July 2011, produced by Ben H. Allen and Greene, followed by Paracosm (August 13, 2013), Mister Mellow (Stones Throw, June 30, 2017), Purple Noon (August 7, 2020) and Notes from a Quiet Life (June 28, 2024), his first fully self-produced album. On April 8, 2024 he performed "Waking Up" in one take during the solar eclipse in Bandera, Texas, and the video for "The Hardest Part" was made with OpenAI's Sora. He cites Sade for music and fashion, and the sculptors Donald Judd, Cy Twombly, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore; he calls each album a world-building exercise. After moving back to the countryside in 2021 he named his former horse farm Endymion.
Live he has played the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas in December 2011, Firefly in 2014, Brooklyn Steel on August 29, 2017 and Delmar Hall in St. Louis on August 6, 2024. "New Theory" appeared in the film The Spectacular Now in 2013.
Albums
- Within and Without 2011 · Sub Pop
His debut album, nine songs produced with Ben H. Allen, with Caroline Polachek singing on "You and I".
Songs
- Amor Fati Within and Without · 2011
Track three of Within and Without and the title of a November 2011 EP.
- Feel It All Around Life of Leisure · 2009
The July 2009 song that defined chillwave, the Portlandia theme, built on a sample of Gary Low's "I Want You".
Sources
- Washed Out, Wikipedia
- Washed Out, Sub Pop
- How Washed Out became the poster boy of chillwave, Creative Loafing
- Washed Out, Within and Without, Treble (2011-07-17)