Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. And by something blue, we mean some blue lights. Lots of blue lights. Great swathes of them, enveloping us all in a floaty, aquatic atmosphere of the sort which will make most here go home and ponder if maybe their pet goldfish have a good racket going on in those tanks of theirs. We’re kind of in chillwave land, one of those ‘new’ genres which the internet spat out in the last couple of years. Being the product of the internet, of course, means we all grew so very bored of chillwave within a matter of months of someone naming it, but there’s clearly still a lot of interest in Washed Out, aka Ernest Greene, who floated into view with ‘Feel It All Around’, a song which seemed to do much to define the nascent genre back in 2009. Yes, 2009. Damn we move fast.
Anyway, fear not, we’re not here for a nostalgic trip back to two years ago, and what better evidence could there be than a support band with a bit of buzz about them – Outfit. The funny thing is that Outfit aren’t actually the “something new” of our slightly contrived introduction, in fact they merit the “something old” epithet purely because they are really really reminiscent of New Order. That’s not to say they sound a lot like New Order, although there are hints in the waves of synth noise, the way they incorporate the modern threads of underground electro and dance into their indie, and the occasional twanging bassline. No, they’ve left the overt aping of the 80s legends to others (cough, Delphic, cough) but they have a similar sort of dilemma ahead of them that New Order had – namely how to convert a taste for melding indie and dance to some massive tunes in order to overcome their vocal limitations.
You see, despite having two singers and a willingness to use this to attempt some intricate harmonies and interlocking vocals, Outfit lack a truly distinctive voice. It needn’t be a massive problem. Bernard Sumner was hardly blessed with a strong voice or particularly good lyrics, and he made that a virtue. Outfit do manage that a couple of times tonight. ‘Every Night I Dress Up As You’, a sinister rumble with neat harmonies which also takes time to hijack most the best bits of indie in 2005, works nicely. ‘Two Islands’ is even better, washes of twisted guitar, a funky bassline, and those slightly anodyne vocals slotted in somewhere where they make sense. If Outfit are going to break through then they need a bit more of this and little less of the slightly generic indie disco fodder, but they’re well worth keeping an eye on.
What of Washed Out? Are they the ‘something new’? Are they a ‘they’ or a ‘he’? Certainly Ernest has brought some friends along for the ride, a drummer lurking in the background and a four piece of synth players at the front, like a slacker Kreftwerk. Greene’s line up now comprises a girl, a guy with dreadlocks, and a really large fella (assuming of course that the rest of the band aren’t tiny and the large fella is just normal sized), so at least when we realise we’re watching a bunch of people with synths we won’t be completely bored. Actually, that’s unfair, Greene is as arresting as you can be when your stock in trade is whispy songs which sound like you’re remembering them rather than hearing hearing them in real time. It makes Washed Out’s main man’s jigging around and relentless bobbing up and down all the more endearing when it’s to relatively chilled stuff like ‘Feel It All Around’ or ‘Amor Fati’. The live set up goes some way to justifiying this behaviour – the rhythm section is cranked right up, giving the songs more heft than their recorded versions. There’s also some minor messing around with the form of some of them – in the absence of Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, the second half of duet (and album highlight) ‘You And I’ is dropped completely, leaving Greene’s chorus to be sung to fade out by the whole band, like a ghostly approximation of ‘Hey Jude’. It means the song loses its hushed sexiness but replaces it with a wistful sense of communal loss. It’s pretty touching.
Elsewhere it’s the ‘hits’ which hit home the best. ‘Eyes Be Closed’ garners the cheers, and ‘Feel It All Around’ is perhaps the most faithfully reproduced track of the night, wobbling around the room and eliciting dancing from some.
It’s a job well done, and heartening to see that Greene has managed to shake off some of the constraints of the chillwave genre, which is probably just as well as that’s so 2009. Oh shit, now I’m doing it too. Sorry.
Washed Out Myspace
Outfit Facebook
