Ernest Greene helped to usher in the synth-forward indie electronic rock movement known as “chillwave” 15 years ago when he self-released a couple of EPs under the moniker Washed Out. Greene was in grad school in South Carolina when just starting this project and later moved back to his native Georgia, where he remains, now in a pretty rural area where he values a “simple lifestyle” focusing on family and creative endeavors. The fifth full-length Washed Out release on the revered Sub Pop label is fittingly called Notes from a Quiet Life.
The artist dropped by WNXP when Washed Out was in town for a show at Brooklyn Bowl in August. Greene told me about the sophisticated production on this tour, with his vision for cubes and projections brought to life by Nashville company Cour. We touched on how he pushes bounds musically at this point, when, as he said, “all of the obvious things to try I’ve probably already done,” and following instinct before music theory ever played a part in his making tunes that I dub “shimmery sad.” We also briefly grazed the controversial topic of an artist’s use of AI, as was employed in the making of the visualizer the song “The Hardest Part.”
I asked Greene about the “glass half-full,” existentially sentimental tune “Wondrous Life,” which implores in its chorus, “If you just slow down and focus on what’s here right now, you’ll find it’s a wondrous life each moment you’re around.” Even though Notes from a Quiet Life boasts its share of dramatic love-lost, “walking away” songs that fit nicely in the Washed Out canon, “Wondrous Life” seems to be the lyrical thesis statement of the record, and more so points to where Greene finds himself these days.
“It’s probably not a surprise that I’m quite obsessive about this project, to the point where it was overshadowing a lot of other things I was not focusing as much on in my life. I worked through some lifestyle changes.” Now, he says, “I’m not at this stage in my career really interested in being in the limelight at all. There is a handful of things I really care about and I want to focus on those things. That’s kind of what I’m getting at with the title [of the record].”
Hear the full conversation with Ernest Greene aka Washed Out, whose Notes from a Quiet Life tour wraps in November, here and at WNXP’s podcast channel.
