Notes from a Quiet Life in Bloomington, MN

With 2022's
Purple Noon
,
Washed Out
's
Ernest Greene
took a step back from crafting daring, quite inventive genre exercises and beat a retreat to the chillwave roots of his sound. Fittingly -- since he moved out to the Georgia countryside after releasing it -- his next album, 2024's
Notes from a Quiet Life
, digs deeper and ends up where the beats are smooth, the vocals are calm, and the whole thing comes across like the soundtrack for sitting under a tree with eyelids half closed as the day slowly passes by. ~ Tim Sendra