Within & Without

Washed Out | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 12, 2011)
• Original Release Date: 2011
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sub Pop
• ASIN: B00505470O
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,990 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #49 in Music > Dance & DJ > Electronica

Editorial Reviews

Washed Out is the operational alias for Atlanta, GA s Ernest Greene, and Sub Pop Records presents the first Washed Out full-length, Within and Without. Greene recorded Within and Without with Ben Allen, who, among a great many other things, co-produced Animal Collective s Merriweather Post Pavillion, Gnarls Barkley s St. Elsewhere and Deerhunter s Halcyon Digest.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

343 of 443 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Music for Hipsters in the Hamptons (3.5 stars) August 23, 2011

By Brandon Whitfeld VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD

Just look at that tanned young couple on the cover art making furious love! Those rumpled, off-white sheets! Eggshell I think they're called in catalogues. A hint of beachy wood flooring if you look closely enough. A hint of shame in her closed eyes, but also resignation, as she holds him tight.

I think the font used for the sleeve is the EXACT SAME font Restoration Hardware uses for their $40 scented candles. I bet one is burning right now. "Vietnamese Plum" is probably the scent of the candle. The party has just ended. You weren't let back in, so she came with YOU. What now? She's in the car, right next to you, as you barrel through the too-quiet night on Lily Pond Lane, and Luke (again!) is passed out cold on the light leather seats...GPS flicked off, you know these turns, baby, and hey...maybe you're a little drunk yourself, sssshh we won't tell, 3 story hedges blocking the view from Martha Stewart's house, you can just see her flickering lights behind the foliage...open the window...man that breeze feels good.

isn't that Grey Gardens? Dude...Dude you awake? Get my 4G out. It's in my Jack Spade beach bag. Just press play.

Just...press play bro...

Groggy: What's this?

Within & Without...by...Washed Out.

Whoa.

Yea. Man it's for us. It's for dudes like us crankin' it out this weekend in Long Island. We'll be in Williamsburg tomorrow, after all that Long Island traffic, back to our sparkly new penthouse condos facing the East River, and our finance jobs, but for now, isn't this just perfect. Yea, it kinda is. The sea is in the air. The dirty laundry (Band of Outsiders, Caulfield Prep, Rag & Bone) scattered on the floor of the cabana. Records from the likes of Beach House, Delorean and Caribou... just seemed like...too complicated for right now, you know? Yea, I know, dude. We need this chill stuff tonight. Chillwave they call it, yea yea, and now I know why. Really? Yea, totally, that's what they call it. Man, there ain't nothing at all wrong with some guy somewhere writing out a soundtrack to our very lives tonight...the specificity of it all...Man, there ain't nothing wrong with specificity...

Ernest Greene is Washed Out's synthing pied piper, the dream pop glo fi wunderkind (from Georgia!) who figured out, sonically, how to have us all relax at an East Hampton spa and Cooper's Beach by his fuzzed-out, shimmering, and somewhat melodic take on things. The drums seem like nothing merely more than beating machines. Greene's voice is an echoing and intoning voice of a swami guru, the Wizard of Chillax, telling us where to put our luggage, and pointing us in the direction of the pool. The beats are guideposts, the synths are the stars in the sky.

The music is pretty and transporting. Greene has achieved something here. "Amor Fati" emerges from this glassy miasma as an actual radio-friendly single. The song is lovely--as if both Seal and Enigma bound forces in 1996 and took a time travel machine together backwards through shoegaze, then forward through the brief Balearic craze of 4 years ago, and then wound up here.

"Call it Off" is my second favorite song on the album (available only as a Bonus Track on certain digital-only editions) because it boasts some fine beats, tickling synths, and Greene's mindless, mirthful intoning. It's yoga music if yogis went to clubs. Do they?

Take a bath and play this record. You won't be disappointed. On your drive back from The Hamptons...play it...with the tinted car windows open, and a fresh breeze flying through your hair. And later that night, when all is quiet and well, and that plum scented candle burns and burns, put on Within and Without by Washed Out and realize, for the first time, that you're not friends anymore. You're friends with benefits.

56 of 71 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not better, or even equal July 12, 2011

By Eugenia Loli

Format:MP3 Music

Washed Out is the undisputed king of chillwave. While there were a number of bedroom artists starting the chillwave [r]evolution in 2009, he was the one that stood out the most, since his songs were spot-on in what made the genre interesting: remembering the care-free '80s era through a distorted glass. Songs like "New Theory", "Feel it all Around", and "Belong" will continue to be representative for at least another 30 years from now.

His new album is still consistent with chillwave, but it's not as memorable. I'm sorry to say that "Within and Without" has no strong melodies the way his previous EP and cassette releases had. All the songs in it are good, but none stands out as "classic", possibly with the exception of "You and I", which was written in 2009, back when Washed Out was writing the rest of his amazing music. But all the newer songs in it are "meh".

If you want to listen to Washed Out's amazing music, search on YouTube for the songs "Luck", and "Good Luck". Few people know about these gems (they were only released on cassette), but they're some of the best chillwave tracks ever written. This new album has no such tracks (at least not with their current mixing).

Make no mistake. The album is good. It's better than what 99% of the rest of the other chillwave artists can offer. But it's not better, not even equal to Washed Out's older music. That was music that takes you away, that wakes up memories from your childhood, in the beach. Music that makes you wanna be an ethereal being in the fantasy land rather than a materialistic human.

But the new album doesn't cross to this other plain. It's possible that Washed Out picked the wrong producer, someone who doesn't get chillwave. The album is mixed towards intensifying the clean sound of drums and synths (like in classic electronic music), rather than intensifying the haziness. This was a major put off for me. I do want to be able to hear the hook, but I want to hear it in a way that doesn't cry for attention or becomes forced on me. The more forced it becomes (by being too audibly clear), the less I can take that sound and fly with it in the clouds (note: I'm a synesthete, so the right music can dig forgotten memories, or create images for me).

Overall, this is possibly the best sophomore release by any chillwave artist this year so far (e.g. Toro y Moi, Memory Tapes, MillionYoung, Small Black, etc), but the whole genre has nowhere as cool-sounding songs as it had in 2009. Personally, I'm somewhat disappointed with all of these artists' 2011 releases.

28 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sexiest Album of 2011 July 13, 2011

By A. M. Gulan

Format:Audio CD

The long-awaited debut LP from Washed Out will not break the hearts of those who have been patiently waiting to consume more of his ethereal and gauzy soundscapes after getting just a taste from the brilliant "Life of Leisure" LP. No...instead, they will fall even more in love with this underrated and largely unknown entity; he is taking the oft-abhorred, but appropriately-titled Chillwave genre to such great heights that he is looking down from the newly-created mountain top at all of the other pretenders who are trying to create grandiose sounds from minimal equipment. "Within & Without" is that rare album that is meant for both intimate listening in your bedroom with your socks kicked off and a lover nearby, as it is for large spaces to leave the masses breathtaken with the intricate beauty of Ernest Greene's patient, delicate hands and his post-coital voice. "Within & Without" is an extremely luxurious and well-constructed album, and while this record seems to be the obvious choice for the Sexiest Album of 2011, it also just might be the finest album of 2011, period.