Forgive Ernest Greene his absence; he’s been gettin’ busy living. The Facebook post announcing Notes From a Quiet Life—the fifth Washed Out LP, and first in four years—closed with “welcome to Endymion.” It’s a reference to the 20-acre, Macon-area horse farm he purchased in 2021 and converted into a combination homestead and artists’ estate. The property is central to the album’s promotion: An illustration of a ranch house adorns Sub Pop’s press release, which is mocked up to resemble mid-century letterhead. Last month, Greene posted a short film (also titled Notes From a Quiet Life) about his day-to-day at Endymion: changing diapers in the magic hour, exploring the woods, tending to his mindfully arranged spheres. Washed Out appears as chillwave personified: a Southern-fried bedroom musician, beating an emotional and sonic retreat to the past in the face of an austerity-wracked present. Endymion feels like the future that Greene’s cohort was sold.
How curious that none of this made it to the record. Despite the fingerpicking depicted in the film, this isn’t Washed Out’s For Emma, Forever Ago, or even a folktronica turn. This time, he actively avoids musical influences. Visual artists, primarily sculptors, were Greene’s inspiration: Barbara Hepworth, Donald Judd, Henry Moore. Those are the leftfield citations of a noise musician or an ECM jazz composer, and an acknowledgment that Greene, too, is refining his own well-recognized forms. The life may be quiet, but the notes seem cribbed: The easiest way to describe this record is 2020’s Purple Noon with the fog burned off. “A Sign” snaps the dissolute lovers rock of Purple Noon’s “Paralyzed” to the grid. The fluttering, fatalistic closer “Letting Go” is a modal cousin to the Balearic reggae of “Time to Walk Away” (to say nothing of Chris Isaak’s transcendentally simpering “Wicked Game”). Where “Reckless Desires” used rhythmic koto figures to remain aloft, “Second Sight” is content to deploy the instrument as a vaporwave glissando.
Notes From a Quiet Life is, somewhat surprisingly, the first Washed Out album Greene has produced alone. Perhaps he cleared the haze in order to better reveal the classical structure of his songwriting. The results sound great: punchy snares and widemouth synth bass. And to an unprecedented degree, his voice—a careful baritone that recalls Beck at his most plaintive—occupies a large part of the space. He brings a stateliness to the expected places: the tender “Got Your Back,” with its wordless lullaby of a hook, and the twinkling “Wondrous Life,” which nearly topples into power balladry. But it’s also present on the dissolute lovers rock of “A Sign,” a crush song that generates its heat from overthinking (“But I think I’m falling hard/Am I taking this too far?”) instead of attraction. “Say Goodbye” is a slow strut of a breakup song, so assuring and frictionless it’s like being sent home in a hovercar.
All this plain speaking can be a drag after a while. Even at his most ponderous, Beck is still good for an arresting image or turn of phrase. The sincerity of Notes From a Quiet Life has no whimsy to counterbalance it, and none of chillwave’s day-drunk reverb to muffle it. And Greene’s attempt to augment his conversational clichés with narrative heft—accepting OpenAI’s commission of a Sora-generated music video for the pop-rock heartbreak of lead single “The Hardest Part”—was a grisly stumble, a shortcut to dream logic from the figurehead of a genre that plays effortlessly with nostalgia and memory.
In the mini-doc, Greene talks about the grind of touring for a musician now in his forties, and his attempts to take better care of his body. With that in mind, you could read this album as a purgative act: a rejection of quick-hit stimuli (narcotic synths, Stones Throw-style beatmaking, house music) in order to find something sustainable. Maybe it’s in the languid R&B of “Wait on You,” with its choice combination of a pitched-down vocal hook, lovestruck coos, and a restless rhythm guitar. Or perhaps in the elevated ’90s adult contemporary of “Running Away,” in which he holds his vowels so long he’s in danger of a shot-clock violation. Despite its slightness, Notes From a Quiet Life is still a landmark in Washed Out’s catalog: a true solo turn and a complete break from chillwave sonics. But having finally acquired all this space, Greene seems unsure how to fill it.
