Nick Waterhouse
The Fooler
Innovative Leisure / PRES
1 April 2023
For over ten years, Nick Waterhouse has carved a reputation as one of the most exciting and authentic-sounding retro-styled songsmiths to come out of the US. We last heard from him with the 2021 album ‘Promenade Blue’, a record which received widespread acclaim and was noted for its lovely orchestration. Two years on, even though the essence of Nick’s musical mode remains intact, the earth seems to have moved somewhat in the Waterhouse world. Some literal movement has occurred, a long-term relationship came to an end, and he relocated from California to France. But there is more to it than that, a less definable yet obvious sense shining through when listening to this record that his music is fuelled by tantalising fresh impetus. The visual stimuli are potent too, especially the front cover image of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach, a previously unpublished work by photojournalist Jim Marshall. Waterhouse used to live across the road from this location, and actually, ‘The Fooler’ found momentum with his drive to catch the sights, sounds and resonances of a time and place long since evolved, reflecting how despite this, they live on in present-day echoes and the friendly ghosts that abound.
Waterhouse himself has recognised a shift in the shape of his song writing with this latest music, feeling that now there is a malleable essence to the songs. He has captured a more Dylan-esque ability to bend time and shape the landscape from a storyteller’s perspective rather than being the central figure. This flavour of open-ended definition even stretches to the title of the album, for ‘The Fooler’ could be a reference to that leading song just as it could be our narrator or even the listener, playing this music that is tied sonically to production values of fifty to sixty years ago, keeping that sound alive in the modern landscape. That is the wonderous thing about Nick Waterhouse, the way he can have such clear references to styles like fifties balladry, twangy surfing summer pop or the primitive organ and guitar attack of sixties garage without ever coming across like a mere revivalist. Anyone can copy the sound of an old record, and, personally, I find that dull to listen to too much, but Nick is putting the songs he writes at centre stage, which is why this works so brilliantly; everything else is just a journey in service of the song. As the man himself stated ahead of this release, “I’m like where did this come from? Especially during this record, I started just becoming what Allen Ginsberg called a pure breath. I was becoming pure breath with my ideas.”
Of course, all the Dylan connections are nothing new with this singer; back in 2016, he did a rollicking version of ‘Baby I’m In The Mood For You’ on the ‘Never Twice’ record. But you can hear him pushing further past the Zimmerman thing with two of the standout tracks on the album, firstly ‘Late In The Garden’ in which Nick summons an almost Velvet Underground-like swagger and an especially credible Lou Reed kind of streetwise cutting-edge in his voice. Earlier ‘(No) Commitment’ cracked open a fresh tin of thin wild mercury then stirred it up with mariachi horns in the chorus while Nick throws out lines like ”I know you got nothing to give to me, but I’m trying to take this seriously” sounding for all the world like a man studiously avoiding any commitment. Could his words be a double bluff? Well, nothing is revealed. Everywhere you turn on ‘The Fooler’ there are sonic nuggets that add to the joyride of listening pleasure, be it those Motown referencing rhythmic piano punches on ‘The Problem With A Street’, the dark ghostly echoes cleverly weaved into the arrangement of ‘Unreal, Immaterial’ or the late night radio show visions that are conjured up in the sound of ‘Hide And Seek’. A shake-up in circumstances in tandem with a fresh wave of focus and inspiration has resulted in the strongest Nick Waterhouse album of his career so far; take my advice and go get yourself lost in the magical world of ‘The Fooler.’
Nick Waterhouse’s The Fooler is out now on Innovative Leisure / PRES.
Order it here: https://lnk.to/fooler_NW
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