"I know it's still early, but we can still rock a little bit," grinned Ernest Greene, aka Washed Out, to a packed house from our MusicFestNW broadcast.
While most people think of Washed Out as an electronic artist, he's recently been touring with a full band that commanded the stage this afternoon at the Doug Fir Lounge. For the peanut gallery in the room, the complaint against his bedroom project turned vast soundscape has always tied to Greene's roots. His early material helped define a new wave of indie laptop production sound that balanced vintage sounds with groovy indie dance beats. But recently, signed to Sub Pop and setting his eyes to the horizon more now than ever, Greene isn't content with the restrictions of digital production. His new record Paracosm is almost entirely recorded live, and it's one of the most epic, atmospherically enticing records of the year.
To further solidify the next chapter for Washed Out, Greene knew where he needed to make it count: the stage. There's plenty of room to take new and old Washed Out material to the live setting with grace and danceable potential. Thus, as we saw at Bumbershoot in Seattle last weekend, Washed Out have upped the ante on their live show and brought fresh power and scope for fans hungry for an immersive experience. Greene and his band are back and bigger than ever, and we were very excited to have them with us today at MusicFestNW.
Seattle's Beat Connection seem to evolve with grace. As is the case with most young bands, they've had plenty of that evolution in the last three years. Their journey from the early house-driven days of 2010's Surf Noir to the vast, green sound of their 2012 debut LP Palace Garden and even through …
