'Timeless' is a word that's generally considered to have positive connotations, which may be one of the reasons it's so often to be found paired with 'classic'. Whether the debut long player by Washed Out - the name under which Atlanta's Ernest Greene records – could be considered a classic, I'm not so sure. He does a nice line in breezy, expansive, wide-screen electro with a laid-back feel. The arrangements are full, the production smooth, and there's a tangible sense of the close attention to detail, for which some of the credit should go do producer Ben Allen, who's previously worked on big albums with Gnarls Barclay, Animal Collective and Deerhunter.
At its best, 'Within and Without' is evocative and affecting, with some nice touches, ranging from the strolling bass on 'Soft' to the shoegaze sonic wash of 'Eyes be Closed' and the wistful 'You and I', but as a whole, the album suffers from not only a lack of variety, but also a lack of direction, as it meanders from one moment to the next with nothing to distinguish one track from another, the songs fading in and fading out without really doing anything to leave their mark on the memory. The vocals don't help: inoffensive as they are, they don't add anything, and certainly don't provide any kind of focal point, sitting midway in the mix and demanding no real attention from the listener whatsoever.
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So when I say that it's a timeless recording, I mean it in the sense that it doesn't belong to a specific time, and could have been made any time since the late 80s, when bands like The Beloved and Enigma were producing chilled out music with mellow dance beats. Pleasant and refined, but instantly forgettable.
Washed Out on MySpace
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