Album Review: Washed Out - Paracosm

In most music circles, it's impossible to even whisper the word 'chillwave' anymore without an accompanying embarrassed laugh or eyeroll, so we're left without an appropriately dumb buzzword to lump the various artists making un-danceable, emotive electronic music together. This means that the new records from these artists can (hopefully) now be taken on merit rather than hype, and in the case of Paracosm, the second record from Washed Out, there's plenty of gold on and under the surface.

Paracosm (which, appropriately, means a kind of imagined fantasy world) is an expansive beast, an album of long grooves that build into shimmering choruses of uplifting synth. Ernest Greene's lyrics sometimes read like affirmations stuck on a bathroom mirror (“Sun is comin' out now/It all feels right”; “Forget about the pain/Leave it all and start again”) like a voice in the back of your head telling you it's all gonna be okay. Don't Give Up, an album highlight along with the gorgeous first single It All Feels Right, is the most explicit expression of that message, and begins and ends with the sounds of a pool party. In between, bright tropical percussion, deftly layered synth and an irresistible vocal hook create a feeling of total bliss. Greene's vocals are foggy with reverb, downbeat but comforting, right up until the very end of the album when the sparse and sinister Pull You Down fades the record out on a more introspective note.

Mostly though, this album sounds like an escape, like pure white light and warmth and, while listening may not quite transport you to a different world, it definitely makes this one a little softer around the edges.