Greene’s retreat from Atlanta’s urban bustle to the serenity of a former horse farm in rural Georgia, named Endymion – a pastoral archetype featured in Keats’ eponymous poem – coincides with a concerted refocus on avoiding the commodification of art in seeking a natural creative impetus. From a bucolic base that has inspired and shaped the multi-hyphenate’s work in recent years, sculpting and painting alongside his familiar musical output, Washed Out, as a project, has absorbed such varying modes of artistic expression to draw on an impulse to withdraw from a cycle predicated on “maximizing productivity”, in Greene’s own words.
It's this intersection of influences that informs a fifth album marked as the first solely produced by Greene. The work of modernist sculptor Henry Moore highlighted as a specific standout influence, Washed Out’s musical architecture undeniably inhabits a similar precision in its spare, unobtrusive, at times disruptive mechanics. From the ubiquity of “Feel It All Around” to the balmy Balearic beat of Purple Noon’s pastel palette, Greene has remained true to a relatively consistent core sound, put on pause with Mister Mellow, which detoured on a hazy hybrid soul trip yet retaining the distinct summer-sheened surface.
Notes From a Quiet Life foregrounds the placidity gracing Washed Out’s primary slew of releases, issuing, as its title suggests, from off-grid and reflecting an urge to retrace roots and reassert artistic motivation in its purest form. Synth patter frames “The Hardest Part” in a style reminiscent of OMD, nodding to Greene’s knack for splicing between sub-genres and decades whilst adding a modern lustre, this extends to the blistering R&B inflections of “A Sign” and the straight-up synth-wave backdrop of “Running Away”. As with much of Washed Out’s canon, this is at once then and now – a patchwork of throwback licks, contemporary gloss and simmering production that continues with “Second Sight” and the ambient stretches of “Wondrous Life”.
Greene’s latest record sits as a halfway house between heady breakthrough EP Life of Leisure and the Mediterranean coastal pop of Purple Noon, the breezy floral notes of Paracosm and an outlier third album figuring more like distant fever dreams. Lead single “Waking Up” and “Say Goodbye” gears up a track list that’s safe in re-enlisting the familiar buoyant synth overtones and laid-back languor that coalesce under the Washed Out moniker. Greene dials down, as was the case with the preceding LP, Notes from Quiet Life serving as a comedown equivalent to the sonic swelter of the former.
