Washed Out – Mister Mellow

Ernest Greene's cabinet of curiosities contain a Dadaist patchwork nature...

“I try to forget about everything that’s bringing me down,” speaks a thick, cough-syrup apparition from beneath the musique concrete of ‘Mister Mellow’, Washed Out’s most recent cabinet of curiosities.

Littered with hyper-stimulants and the minutiae chaos of modern living, and where Ernest Greene, purveyor of faded daytime psychedelia, once spoke to romantic stasis from his internal landscape of unseen tropics, his diverting third effort sees him taking a heavy blow from reality.

‘Hard To Say Goodbye’ acts as a disco lounge ode to the beaches of Washed Out’s world, before ‘Down And Out’ drunkenly follows – clawing at the edges of the imagination high before sinking into its own pit of anxiety-ridden questioning.

‘Easy Does It’ offers an answer to the towering pressures of modern life, instructing the listener to simply “roll with the punches,” but regardless of the sobering nature of a quarter-life crisis, Greene finds himself returning to the strange paradise of his making on cloud-busting closer ‘Million Miles Away’ – repeating the question: “Will I ever make out?”

As Greene puts it, “take a hit and get lost,” and with the Dadaist patchwork nature of ‘Mister Mellow’, there is no anticipating where it will take you.

7/10

Words: James Musker

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