REVIEW: WASHED OUT AT BRISTOL THEKLA (11/08/11)
The issue with support act, Follow The Planet, might be more social than musical – he could do with some more people around him. This was one guy who really went to town on his loop machine. Most tracks would start with a steady drone provided by the keyboard, drum machine or guitar and slowly but surely a melody would form. Sometimes with upbeat techno chords bouncing off one another and other times simple guitar strums sounding like a really long intro to Kiss by Prince. There was nothing wrong with the sound he was making but the nature of a loop machine is that all songs can only get bigger, layer on layer of rhythm and melody reaching soaring crescendos that then had to promptly end for the set to function. I would say that if Follow The Planet branched out and instruments and sole players, these ever growing melodies could turn in to strong tracks. The ideas are clearly there but he might need to let a few others in on them.
From first gazing at the artwork for Washed Out’s woozy debut, ‘Within and Without’ you could tell it was all very perfect. Two wonderfully tanned bodies intertwined with one another resting on paper white sheets, covered only by the trendy logo of this synthesizing dude from Georgia. The album is a dreamy set of bedroom honed chill tracks but the bass and pulse of tonight’s show at Thekla pointed to Washed Up creating less of a Thursday night chill and more of a Saturday night fever. Ernst Greene (aka Washed Out) turned Thekla in to a little bit of a disco. Album track ‘Soft’ which usually has spaced vocals and a lo-fi beat suddenly became a bass-infected dance anthem that rattled the floor of the venue with it’s new found euphoria. This was a theme of the evening. One member of the supercool band was punching out huge slap beats on a drum machine that would have been lost in reverb on record. The pre-encore closer ‘Eyes Be Closed’ had such a free huge riff that Washed Out rightfully left playing for quite a while. What made this show so great was the knowledge of what could have been.
Washed Out could have very easily delivered a humdrum chill wave set of their matted beats and mussy tones that would have kept the scenesters happy and would have been easy work from Ernst Green. What we got was a set of modified dance tracks that had gone through a crash course in how to fill a dance floor. The problem was the crowd were prepared and suited for the subtle chill wave head nodding therefore the crashing beats and colossal hooks didn’t get quite the reception they deserved but give it time- if Washed Out keep gigging at this standard and word spreads of the disco they bring to town the fever could spread all over.
Words: Duncan Harrison
Photo: Malcom Kodak
