Paracosm - Washed Out - Album Review

Ernest Greene, the shy boy behind Washed Out, has gone above and beyond since Within Without in 2011.Paracosm brings forth a mature sound, displaying hours of work that have gone into perfecting every second of this album, which Greene says features over 50 different instruments. Paracosm roughly means an imaginary, detailed fantasy world, and this is what the album essentially aims to create. The immersive nature of the songs asks you to “Feel It All Around” and completely indulge your senses in Greene’s imaginary musical world, painted with crowd noise, bird tweets and other tropical sounds. “It All Feels Right” was the single that hinted what was to come, a tropical ‘trippy’ concoction of sounds both acoustic and electronic that set the tone for the rest of the album. The album followed with hints of psychedelic rock, synthpop, chillwave, shoegaze, and trip hop permeating the songs to create a sound that is completely and utterly unique to Washed Out. Greene proves himself to be an artist not bound by genre, and his music flourishes in freedom.

Each song oozes with nostalgia, melting into multi-textured psychedelic bliss. While some of the songs are almost 5 minutes long, the length doesn’t detract from quality or enjoyment, but rather allows the listener to immerse completely into the many layers of warm reverb and wave-like currents of sound. This is essentially the nature of the whole album, which seems to focus on indulging and immersing oneself in a feeling. “Feel It All Around” and it “It All Feels Right” focus on this idea lyrically, but “Falling Back” and “Weightless” are the most immersive musically, slowly building to an almost overwhelming rush of dripping layers. Greene also lets his voice (literally) be heard more in this album than ever before, and while his vocals are neither perfect nor well-pronounced they meld together well with the overall sound, providing another layer rather than overpowering the instrumental waves he’s perfected.

There are some darker tones underlying this summery, nostalgic album however. “All I Know” hints at the fear of losing someone, and “Don’t Give Up”, despite it’s upbeat nature, reveals a yearning for a long lost relationship: “I was still surprised when I caught your eye after all this time, And it took me back to the times we had”. There are some rare albums you can pull apart and be delighted by as you learn more and more about each layer, and this is one of them.

- Reviewed by Martina Calvi

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