Washed Out: “The new record isn't a reaction to what chillwave represented”

“Before I started out on the record I had a pretty good idea of the sonic direction I wanted to explore. I had this vague idea of, “what does daytime music sound like?”

Ernest Greene, who releases music under the name Washed Out, first made his mark with his Life of Leisure EP in 2010, with lead single ‘Feel It All Around’ setting the blogosphere alight; it’s since garnered wider recognition as the title music on Carrie Brownstein’s Portlandia. After signing to Sub Pop, he cemented his position as one the most exciting electronic propositions around with his debut full-length, Within and Without, in 2011; he found himself inadvertently spearheading the so-called ‘chillwave’ movement around that time.

“I wanted to experiment with a more human aspect of music, and I’d already been using far more acoustic instruments than before; I recorded a Fleetwood Mac cover for this compilation that kind of necessitated the use of that kind of instrumentation, and it was really fun. It seemed like an exciting new thing, to be exploring something I didn’t know much about, so I started with that sonic palette and there was a kind of whimsical quality to the first songs that started to develop.”

Two years on from his debut, Greene is readying Paracosm, a record that’s scored through with an ever-evolving thematic maturity – the word itself refers to a meticulously-planned imaginary world. “I came across this term, ‘paracosm’; I liked the way it sounded, but I really loved how the understanding of this imaginary world made a lot of sense with the ideas I’d been playing around with. I guess that’s the nutshell version. I’d been reading about the outsider artist, Henry Darger, and he was kind of a classic example of what ‘paracosm’ meant; it originally came from a psychology study, focusing on people like him, who had a pretty ordinary everyday life, and then these really detailed, crazily imaginative alternative realities. I definitely felt I could draw some connection between what he was doing and the way in which I felt I was building this world of my own, piece by piece.”

This time around, Greene had access to a much broader range of resources than previously, mainly owing to the building of his own home studio and the obsessive growth of his collection of equipment. “In the house I’m living in, there’s a massive window in front of my workspace and a garden right outside. I live in a really rural area, and I just think the bright colours in the garden and nature in general were really inspiring – you can see that in the artwork, too. The biggest thing for me was just being in a comfortable place; in the past, I’ve worked in tiny apartments with no windows and things like that. We had been living in Atlanta, but funnily enough, the thing that kind of forced us out here was my instrument collection, which is expanding all the time. We ran out of space, basically!”

Despite the sonic and topical progression from the last album, Greene chose to retain Ben Allen on production duties. “It was important for me to have somebody as well versed in the technical side of recording as Ben is. I wasn’t too familiar with a lot of the live instrumentation I was using on this record, and with Ben, I could describe to him in very vague, abstract terms what I was hearing in my head, and he has the musicality to understand that and translate it into the technical world. We work really fast as well, and it was very convenient that he lives in Atlanta, about an hour’s drive from here.”

The swift turnaround for Paracosm – the album was in the can just six months after touring commitments for the last release were wrapped – is testament to Greene’s workaholic tendencies. “We got finished touring for Within and Without at the end of October last year. I started writing pretty much immediately, at the start of November; I had most of the songs written and demoed by the end of the year, which I did here in my studio, and I’d pretty much finished off the keyboards and a lot of the layered instrumentation by then.”

“I had rough sketches of the drums and some of the live elements that I couldn’t really pull off in my studio, but I didn’t end up linking up with Ben until the beginning of March. It was a little bit difficult, because he was working on a few other projects at the time, and I would kind of turn up in between when he had breaks. Overall, I think we did around twenty days together, but that was spread out over a couple of months. We mixed everything at his studio, and it was all finished by the end of April. It happened really quickly, and I actually had quite a bit of material left over. I think, for a lot of reasons, it was just a really prolific time.”

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During his last promotional cycle, Greene had spoken of the problems he encountered in making the transition from bedroom musician to a signed artist on one of the world’s biggest independent labels, particularly in terms of overcoming the nerves that come with the knowledge that you’re making music for other people, rather than yourself. You wonder, then, if this was something that carried over to the making of Paracosm.

“No, not really. It was definitely the case with the last record; I felt anxious and… I don’t want to say I felt paralysed, but it was really hard to make some of the creative decisions because I was nervous about every tiny detail. This time around, it’s been easier. I think that’s partly because I’m more experienced, and probably better, when it comes to putting doubt aside, but the most important thing was being able to shut off the business side of things, and get away from that practical mentality – I was just having fun making music again.”

“This process was a much more pleasant experience. It also helped to have a much clearer concept from the get go; on Within and Without, I was really experimenting the whole time, and stumbling upon ideas purely through trial and error. The overall concept I had for this record put some limitations in place for me, that made it much easier to just jump into the song I was writing instead of me spending a week messing around with things in the hope that some interesting sounds would come up.”

The intense, and often frivolous, media attention that seemed to come as part and parcel of the so-called ‘chillwave’ movement around the time of the release of Within and Without led to an inevitable backlash, which Greene feels has died down in the intervening years.”I think it has, which might make things slightly easier for me. There was so much attention – a lot of it negative – to the hype that surrounded chillwave for a short time a couple of years back, but I think it ultimately played into me being more confident when I made this album. I don’t think I was ever trying to react against what chillwave represented; this is still a Washed Out record, but with different instrumentation in place. It’s a subtle change of pace. The difficult thing for me is that I never want to make a complete left turn. I always want a connection to the past in whatever I’m doing, whilst still moving forwards with the aesthetic.”

After such an extended period on tour in support of his first LP, and with such lofty ambitions for the second, it’s perhaps a little surprising that Greene opted for his native Georgia for the writing and recording process, rather than decamping to the more obvious musical surroundings of New York or Los Angeles. “I’ve spent pretty much my entire life in and around the south-east of the United States,” says Greene. “I feel comfortable here, and we just spent so much time on the road for Within and Without; we got to go to a lot of amazing places, but at the end of it all, I just wanted to slow down, and it’s so much easier to do that here than somewhere like New York. It’d be harder to jump straight back into the creative side of things there. I mean, if I had my way, I’d stay at home all the time and just make records; that’s the fun part for me. Not that the live part isn’t fun; it’s a different thing, but I think naturally, I’m pretty much a homebody, and would probably rather not do the travelling thing.”

Given that touring is now such a huge part of Greene’s life, it’s safe to assume that he had to be mindful of how he was going to make the songs he wrote for Paracosm work live. “I think that’s just the reality of what Washed Out has become – I certainly don’t feel much of a connection with the way I started, as a bedroom producer, making really beat-driven music with a lot of electronics. I love that kind of stuff on record, but it didn’t make for the most entertaining shows to watch. That’s something I’ve come to realise over the years, and I definitely was thinking about that with this new album; I was trying to incorporate some more varied songwriting ideas, and a lot more live playing, to make for an easier transition to the stage.”

“There’s so much sequencing on the first couple of releases, and it feels really stale trying to recreate that with a band. On this record, I keep telling people that there’s a lot more in the way of swinging beats – you know, beats with a little bit of groove, that sound a little looser. That’s something that’s seeped into the guitar and bass as well. It’s just another part of what I’m trying to do with Washed Out, which is to make it as human as possible.”

Paracosm is available August 12th via Weird World/Sub Pop.