Washed Out - Within and Without [Sub Pop/Weird World]

7.7

Ernest Green, or more known as Washed Out, does chillwave. Strictly chillwave. After getting some solid material out there, Green signed with Sub Pop to release his debut Within and Without. Heavy synthesizers, dancey beats, and Green’s soft and tender voice make up the sound surrounding Washed Out’s chillwave appearance, but unlike the earlier releases of the year from Toro Y Moi, Washed Out is chillwave. Moment fade in and out for Green’s debut, but keep a solid rendition of great sounding pop music that is easy, breezy music for a summer evening.

Hitting off with the one and only superb track off Within and Without, “Eyes Be Closed”, Green’s knack for creating this near-epic atmosphere that’s like an airplane taking off for its maiden voyage. This eerily familiar space of sound Green creates does transcribe into later tracks, but it’s most prominent on “Eyes Be Closed”. The softly vintage sound that inscribes the album intertwines with its charm of being innocent yet ready; “Soft” takes us through a mixture of heavy bass and layers upon layers of synthesizers soaring right through Green’s almost ghostly vocals.

What’s lacking to make Within and Without totally engrossing to the ear is the overflow of cheesiness in some of the tracks; they have some of that soft, floating sound but reveal more of the cheesy dance music. “Before” has good potential, but is bogged down through the Blade Runner-esque spurts of synths flowing throughout the song. “You and I” just sounded too much like a super mellow Daft Punk b-side that turns itself over to over indulgent synths yet again. These tracks would indeed sounds fine as casual background, but in tight, introspective listens are not inviting on Within and Without, but really what chillwave is?

Chillwave is simple music with dynamics of create atmosphere that appeal to memories and senses. Finale track “A Dedication” is another quiet highlight that uses it’s expanses of synths beautifully along with Green’s vocals that really just hits a sweet spot in your brain. Hitting that sweet spot is what chillwave is all about anyway, to evoke a past memory or unique emotion for a small moment, like a quick high. Green’s vocals do that marvelously when masking emotions in a shell that is so complex to interpret.

Even if Within and Without isn’t that record for chillwave as I’ve mentioned in earlier reviews, it’s still a great listen for anybody who wants a taste of some “scene” music. With minimal highlights and minimal dragging moments, Within and Without is truly solid in a sense that its architecture is nicely built with small spots of error, but interesting spots of beauty. Exciting things will happen with Ernest Green in his musical future.

Wild Beasts - Smother [Domino]

7.9

Smother. A very vivid verb whenever I think of it. I think of compression, suffocation, and other means of pressure. Though that imagery of Wild Beasts’ third LP Smother is dark and uncertain, light shines through in Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming’s voices. Looking back at the second album Wild Beasts put out in 2009, Two Dancers, Smother is more tamed, yet still has Wild Beasts’ primal tendencies to be sensual and being lewd. Smother is enjoyable, but still lacks a dynamical characterization that really blows Wild Beats into instant “classic” status.

Smother is a very percussive album. It really prides itself in its percussion, drums and anything deep. Every song on a deep backbone of a tom-tom fill that stays consistent with the rest of the song while quirky synths, guitar loops, and other non-percussive sounds make their way above the wildly consistent percussion, this intriguing idea creates this sense of being tamed while having the same wild tendency like a semi-tamed wild animal. It’s almost tribal the way Wild Beasts do it, “Deeper” has this chilling guitar line and wild piano inclusion in the midst all backed by this relatively simple beat that drummer Chris Talbot creates.

Even the lyrical word play of Fleming and Thorpe on most of the songs is very sexually inclined and has no limits. “I take you in the mouth/Like a lion takes his game,” Thorpe sings out on first track “Lion’s Share” instantly showing his lewd and semi-hilarious word play. Though Thorpe and Fleming share the mic on Smother, they are almost impossible to tell the difference between the two both having a very enticing falsetto that grips you into a false sense of calm while wild instrumentation takes you completely over.

Smother is simply about desire and burdens that Wild Beasts are carrying. “Albatross”, one of Smother’s definitive highlights paints the way for burdens and pain with lines like, “It’s my neck around which you hang”. Smother is definitely dark and can turn listeners off to their different approach of making creative music, but this heightens the listening experience of Smother. It simply expands on what Wild Beasts learned during Two Dancers and creates such a vivid experience of desire especially on the album closer “End Come Too Soon” with epic vocals cries from Thorpe.

MellowHype - BlackenedWhite (Reissue) [Fat Possum]

7.0

The collaboration of two OFWGTA members Hodgy Beats and Left Brain is an interesting one. MellowHype is what it’s called and they’ve self-released BlackenedWhite last year on Halloween via OFWGTA’s website, when they weren’t as known they are now. The move to re-release this album again on a semi-mainstream indie label Fat Possum is a risky one. Will it taint their “underground” image? No, as Tyler, the Creator and other OF members has stated in interviews and in songs, they wants OFWGTA to go to the top. I believe it’s a smart move to get a different spectrum of OF out there rather than just Tyler or Earl Sweatshirt.

The reissue of BlackenedWhite is basically the same album except with a couple of new tracks and the exclusion of a lot of tracks, which is a puzzling move considering most of those songs were pretty solid including “Gram” and “Chordaroy”, except the latter included vocals from Earl Sweatshirt who if you haven’t heard is MIA and they didn’t have permission to use his vocals on the reissue. Fortunately the new song, “64”, makes up for a lot of ground the excluded tracks lost, but it still isn’t enough.

On MellowHype’s debut, Yellow/White, Odd Future elements were written all over it; the mixture of minimalistic and new age hip-hop beats to create something that is unfamiliar to the ear and yet it sounds so right. Unfortunately, BlackenedWhite mixes more of the “pop rap” elements to it with more crunk beats and those annoying fast beats that turn me off to the modern pop hip-hop that infests the radio. “Gunsounds” does some cool play with gun sounds as part of the beat and Hodgy Beats rapping is as strong as ever, but I just hate the non-relaxed feel of it the way MellowHype’s debut felt.

Some of the best songs off BlackenedWhite are the ones with different feeling beats like on “Brain” and “Right Here” where Hodgy Beats and Left Brain’s stoner side show with a more chilled and relaxed feel that suits MellowHype much more. Overly vulgar tracks like “F666 the Police” and “Igotagun” are just plain annoying. The best moments off BlackenedWhite come from Hodgy of course, but even moments from Frank Ocean on “Rico” or Domo Genesis on “Brain” are acceptable and overshadow the performance of when Left Brain takes the mic, which is just awkward. Left Brian really needs to stick to the beats and production after a performance on “Circus” with his lazy flow.

BlackenedWhite feels incomplete, probably because I was so used to the other tracks being included along with the ones on the reissue, but what Hodgy and Left Brain put on here isn’t bad, low and high points are everywhere, but the high ones are far superior to the low points. Too bad the duo couldn’t have taken more elements from their debut to create something even better, but hopefully the next album can be a nice medium between the two to create something that is the best release from Odd Future to date.