Washed Out has become this year’s most talked artist in the chillwave music scene, a massively growing genre defined by dreamy indie pop. What makes Washed Out’s Earnest Greene so unique? It’s quite simple, really – he does it best! What started as a hobby to cope with the nation’s unemployment dilemma, turned into a rapidly rising music career, as Greene unassumingly posted some bedroom-recorded songs online that spread like wildfire. A remarkably impressive feat of songwriting and production given Greene’s means at the time (essentially little more than a laptop, sample bank and microphone), the songs of his debut EP, Life of Leisure, saw him, alongside friend Chaz Bundick, AKA Toro y Moi, and the more established likes of Ariel Pink and Panda Bear, designated leader of a newly emerging DIY movement identified by David Keenan of The Wire magazine as “hypnagogic pop” for its romantic, retro-futurist re-imagining of pop music past.
“Amor Fati,” premiered by Entertainment Weekly at the end of September, is a prime example of what makes Washed Out’s sound so outstanding. Pitchfork, who gave the record a high mark, describes it as “Public Enemy drums creeping through Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love’, and there’s a lush, snowy warmth to the production.” Still unconvinced? SPIN, scored the record as 9 out of 10, an impossible rarity reserved for the best records of the year. Rolling Stone, Stereogum and many others are following suite. The video finds Greene’s stand-in (fellow musician Luke Rathborne) taking a solo road trip through Iceland, driving along country paths, chasing livestock, taking a bath with a beautiful woman, engaging in some verbal foreplay with a hot dog vendor, and generally re-creating the hallucinatory sense of awe and alienation one gets on an extended foreign vacation.
Full bio HERE.