Washed Out w. Small Black
Blue Moose Tap House — Tuesday, Sept. 2 at 8 p.m.
Iowa City, are you ready to get real chill Tuesday night? Because Athens, Georgia’s Washed Out will be playing the Blue Moose tomorrow with Brooklyn indie band Small Black, two of the chillest groups in the country.
Washed Out is the project of multi-instrumentalist Ernest Greene. His music bears every signifier of the oft-maligned “chillwave” genre: clouds of warm reverb, sleepy synths and simple, stoned lyrics. Within and Without, Washed Out’s debut full length album, delves into darker themes of millennial alienation and angst in a crumbling economy, with the balmy, wonked-out production wrapping around Greene’s lyrics like a security blanket.
Heavy ideas aside, Greene, with his hazy approach to electronic pop music, has gained a reputation for making the indie world’s most excellent make-out music. It’s no surprise that the word “feel” is featured prominently in Washed Out’s two biggest songs, “It All Feels Right” and “Feel It All Around” — typifying the physical nature of Washed Out’s music. Greene uses reverb not to signify distance, but to give the impression of a something too close to actually focus on, bringing an understated intensity to his tracks. Above all, Tuesday’s show should be a testament to how easy it is to get moving to easy-going, “chill” music.
The show begins at 8 p.m. with a ticket price of $20.
