Press something on coloured vinyl and it will miraculously jump into my hand and insist on being added to the still burgeoning archive at Bluesbunny Towers. Of course, I could just stay out of record shops like Mono in Glasgow – this twelve incher is, I’m told, one of their big sellers – but the Internet would just get me instead when I got home.
It has also to be said that, prior to this, I had no idea who Washed Out were (from a helpful sticker applied to the sleeve by the record shop, I learned that Washed Out is actually an alias from one Ernest Greene who records his music in his bedroom). That did not really matter as this was purple vinyl so it had to be good and so it turned out to be. Admittedly, you would have to be in to a rather curious amalgam of influences from eighties synth pop through plastic disco and ambient electronica into angst ridden singer songwriter. Take “Get Up” as an example. It’s almost danceable in a retro way even if it sounds like you are listening to it from the next room. That running backwards in time feels pervades other tracks too such as “Hold Out” that would surely have found a home in the soundtrack to some straight to video movie about a girl who gets lost in the city.
Now that I think of it, the appeal of these songs probably lies in their lo-fi disconnected sound. They do sound and feel like you are listening to them play next door rather than in the room you are in and you end up forming a one to one relationship with them as opposed to the one to many relationship of, say, an X Factor type song. Intimacy and isolation all at the same time – not the easiest thing to achieve.
This release is part of a limited edition of 2000 on purple vinyl. As “Salt” is inscribed in the run out groove, I reckon it was mastered at Salt Mastering in New York by Paul Gold. Sound quality clearly wasn’t going to be a consideration given the type of music but it is a clean cut.