Nick Waterhouse

Nick Waterhouse – Promenade Blue (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 34:26 minutes | 597 MB | Genre: Soul
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Innovative Leisure

Nick Waterhouse is the Larry Daley of music. Larry Daley being of course the night watchman played by Ben Stiller in the film series Night at the Museum. Since Time’s All Gone, his 2012 debut album, the Californian has been working as a guard at the music museum, in the rhythm’n’blues and 1950s soul-pop section. In fact, in his youth, he worked in a record shop specialising in oldies, which undoubtedly shaped his taste for music from a time when girls were called Brenda, cars went a couple of miles to the gallon, and music was played on black plastic wafers called records. All this could be limited to sterile and outdated stylistic exercises, but just as in Night at the Museum, Nick Waterhouse brings magic and life to his records. Now we switch the reel: welcome to the world of Mad Men, in an America where growth still goes hand-in-hand with elegance, where saxophones purr, where backing singers go “doo-wop doo-wop”, and where the blues has become chic cocktail bar music. Think of Jerry Butler, Charles Brown, Ben E. King, the great romantics of the golden age of soul. There is nothing new in Promenade Blue, which is perhaps even more retro than his previous albums – even the production sounds vintage. But there is nothing obsolete either: just timeless and masterful technique. – Stéphane Deschamps

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Nick Waterhouse – Holly (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 30:06 minutes | 333 MB | Genre: Soul
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Innovative Leisure

‘Holly’ embodies the struggle of his early forays. During “This Is a Game,” Waterhouse sets up a snarly, post-surf guitar solo with a succinct statement of a cynical outlook: “This is a game / Please remember my words / And don’t get upset when you don’t get what you think you deserve.” And on the gothic-soul strut “Let It Come Down,” he meditates on the inevitability of pain. “If there’s gonna be rain tonight,” he sings in a stoic croon. “Let it come down.”

It’s clear from this material that Waterhouse is in the midst of his own becoming. He isn’t the type to let ecstasy take over, like Van Morrison, or to drawl away in a consum- mately laid-back register, like Mose Allison. In the tension between his wry lyrics and crisp arrangements, you hear the expression of a worldly skeptic who’s also—when it comes to his art—a sanctified believer. Whoever it was that Nick Waterhouse wanted to be matters less now; these days, he just sounds like himself.

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