Runner's Hi-Fi: Washed Out, 'Within and Without'

John Hughes is haunting Washed Out's "Within and Without" (Sub Pop). There have been traces of his ghost before in the rooms of other houses, wandering around inside M83's "Saturdays = Youth," Farmer Ted waking up hungover in his headgear, Gary and Wyatt with bras strapped beneath their chins conjuring. You could, of course, simply call "Within and Without" another edition to the expanding chillwave catalog. And, yes, the album is a sincere take on '80s synthpop with not a lick of irony, all the edges of its sound made murky and blurred as if traveling over a radio for three full decades. But that assessment might miss the influence here of Hughes, who seems to have become a curator for a generation of musicians too young for first-hand nostalgia for his films. Take, for instance, how any number of Ernest Greene's tracks could replace the Thompson Twins' "If You Were Here" as the outro track of "Sixteen Candles," especially "Amor Fati," where Greene almost gets breathy enough to match Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey. But Greene's greatest accomplishment on "Within or Without" is capturing Hugh's cinematic mood, an emotional space somewhere on the edge of adulthood, where childhood is just about to be lost. And perhaps adolescence is the real ghost here, John Hughes only its director.