Washed Out to release album in July

 

Recently the band Washed Out has signed to Sub Pop. Via this label (and Domino worldwide) he will release an album on the 12^th of July. It will be called Within and Without and it will count nine tracks. The album has been recorded with Ben Allen and it will start with the song ‘Eyes be Closed’ and end with ‘A Dedication’.

It was not even that long ago when, as I was reading a magazine while walking Allen K., my beagle, I came across an article, a dedication to Leopold Sirov. Now, a couple of days later, the magazine’s internet outlet had already been flooded by many angry letters stating that, on all accounts, Sirov should not have had a dedication, ehrm, dedicated to him. The dedication portrayed Sirov as a “modern thinker”, a man “whose critiques on humanity and the current state of city life have been indispensible for many and always spot on”. Reactions that followed were often petty, and raised minor issues like that he has never been published, that his thoughts were never recorded (written or otherwise), that he has never held a position of any status, that he never held any position at all, and that a man sitting on a park bench in Soho as his full time occupation should on all accounts not be heralded in such a manner. As, so continued that particular enviously squabbling letter, this sets a bad example for the next generation, who then will think they can be great by “not doing anything except spouting on about humanity and the current state of the city, which he has never seen as I’ve not once spotted him anywhere outside of his little park between Bleeker and Fifth.”

As you can see, these are all very much minor quibbles, jealous ramblings of people who feel that they have accomplished more and that they do have the training, the experience, and have had the successes to have a dedication being written about them. What they conveniently forget is that Sirov has carefully created his image as “The man on the park bench dressed in shabby attire and with an unkempt beard making him look like Meryl Streep in Angels in America.” Everyone always knew where to find him, which is a plus as people didn’t have to rely on appointments at fancy universities to get advice. And he was always willing to give advice to anyone and for free, only asking a bottle of scotch for his greater orations like “Why we should keep an eye on pigeons (as they are keeping an eye on us)” and the brilliant “Kids behaving badly and how to scare the shit out of them using pointy sticks and an aria from Il Trovatore (and preferably Stride la Vampa)”. That all this was never put to paper or never recorded is as unfortunate as it was probably deliberate, for living in the modern city means that everything changes so often that at the moment of publication it would already be outdated anyway. A stroke of genius only Sirov could think of, illustrating his firm grasp of the intricacies of modern life.