This record rules, but whoever coined the term “Chillwave” needs a beating. For obvious reasons. Once you’ve given something a name that vapid, you’ve simultaneously assured it a shelf life of about 20 minutes. I’d be willing to bet my autographed Air Jordans (that I don’t have) that no one in the history of time ever thought, “I was gonna put on some New Wave, but … I needed something chiller”
I deserve a dick punch for even writing the term down.
So there you go. Washed Out is a Chillwave band, apparently. And for that reason alone you’d be forgiven for taking a pass.
There are other reasons you might shrug it off too: their first LP didn’t really hold up to the promise of their early work (the most famous example of which is, “Feel it All Around,” the theme song to Portlandia … a killer jam even if it is little more than the bridge of Gary Low’s “I Want You” slowed to 33 RPMs with vocals added).
But perhaps the most compelling reason to skip Paracosom is that some might argue it’s been rendered irrelevant. It is true that when it comes to this sort of music; there just so happens to be a new sheriff in town. One who’s made everybody else seem a bit superfluous: Jai Paul.
Jai is worth mentioning for the benefit of the uninitiated. It’s not just that he has his shit on lock (he does). It’s that he’s coersively fascinating without even trying and that makes everyone else look bad.
Dude’s got some gall too.
For example, earlier this year Daft Punk was in the middle of a meticulously planned and marketed roll out for Random Access Memories. On the day they released their first single, “Get Lucky,” it was supposed to be, you know, a BFD. But someone, perhaps Jai himself, had plans of their own. Out of nowhere a Bandcamp page popped up selling 16 unfinished Jai Paul tracks. Ten of which were so ludicrously mind-blowingly awesome that they made Daft Punk sound like Laurence Welk.
Robots wept.
A lot of people thought it was a stunt, but in that moment, Jai Paul’s music not only caused quite a stir – a clusterfuck of speculation eclipsed any and all murmurings about Daft Punk – it also unleashed what is still by far the most exciting music of the year.
All subsequent releases, even the most excellent ones, of this sort have had to suffer the same indignity of living in Jai’s shadow. Every “Holding On,” and “White Noise,” has had to recon with is the fact that it sounds 10 years behind some unofficially released, unnamed, and unmastered demo that the world only knows as “Track 5.”
So how does Paracosm compare?
Truthfully, it doesn’t compare at all. But to be fair, let’s acknowledge that Jai skewed the curve. And big time. But when I was sizing this record up, the one thing that kept gnawing at me was that there isn’t a single bad song on this thing. It deserves to be judged on it’s own merits.
Ernest Greene isn’t breaking any new ground though. His M.O. is pretty much the same as ever; he makes sonically adventurous (though much less so than before) bedroom pop with an aesthetic as much paisley crushed velvet as it is glo-sticks and popping molly. Paracosm is a happy yet subdued affair, at once glorious and spaced-out.
What has changed is that Greene has focused his energies on good old-fashioned songwriting. It’s not a bad thing either, even if he did do it at the expense of risk-taking. Washed Out is writing songs for the masses now. And a few of them really work. At first glance “Don’t Give Up” and “All I Know” tower above the rest of the record, but after several listens the other tracks begin to reveal themselves too. My current favorite, “Great Escape” has a slide guitar that sounds like it’s straight out of a luau and a beat that Terminator X might have sprung.
The weak point of the album, besides it’s lack of exploration, is is the words. I suggest experiencing Greene’s lyrics the way they were meant to be enjoyed: as the wonderful reverb-drenched vowel sounds they are. In other words; interpret them at your peril.
Still, Washed Out deserves a little bit of credit. Greene helped pioneer the very sound that Jai Paul has taken to the next level on early Washed Out tracks like, “Hold Out” (see also Jaimie XX’s remix of Gil Scott-Heron’s “My Cloud” James Blake’s cover of “Limit to Your Love,” and Neon Indian’s “Dead Beat Summer” for a few other excellent examples). While Paracosm might not be as exciting as the impeccably crafted, paradigm-shifting, sonic explorations of Jai Paul – stuff that requires the listener to come correct with speakers of extraordinary quality to handle the bass – Washed Out has made one hell of an album that’ll catch your friend’s ears coming out of an old boombox at a BBQ. And that alone makes me pretty confident that time will be kind to it.
Rating: 4/5