NICK WATERHOUSE
''HOLLY''
MARCH 4 2014
30:05
1 High Tiding 02:46
2 This Is A Game 02:49
3 It No. 3 03:00
4 Let It Come Down 02:32
5 Sleeping Pills 03:09
6 Holly 02:39
7 Dead Room 02:48
8 Well It's Fine 03:02
9 Ain't There Something That Money Can't Buy 03:26
10 Hands On The Clock 03:51
Jeff Babko - piano
Ron Blake - trumpet
Matthew Correia - percussion
Carol Douglas - vocals
Rob Douglas - bass
Jason Freese - tenor, baritone sax
Roberta Freeman - vocals
Larry Goldings - piano, organ
Richard Gowen - drums
Brit Lauren Manor - vocals
Gavin Paddock - percussion
Anthony Polizzi - electric guitar, vibraphone, timpani, Arranger on 4, 6, 10
Andres Rentaria - percussion
Kyle Stephens - electric harpsichord, piano
Jon "JT" Thomas - organ
Francisco Torres - trombone, bass trombone
REVIEW
David Jeffries, AllMusic
Rooted in rhythm & blues with a damned Bobby Darin stance that says "I'm the Mayer Hawthorne-type singer that's perfect for adding sensual tension to any given David Lynch soundtrack," Nick Waterhouse is in fine form on his 2014 effort Holly; just don't take that Dan Fogelberg-ish album cover for music filled with '70s nostalgia. Go back a decade or two as the '50s and '60s are where this sometimes garage-rocking, sometimes Allah-Las member gets his kicks, something easily picked up on the album's title track, where a tight horn section, a standard beat combo, and plenty of wet reverb power the lusty tune. Indie Chris Isaak is the way that the cleverly titled third track "It #3" rocks over the detached lyrics, which are an almost haiku-like exploration of paranoia, with the short yet vivid words given more meaning by Waterhouse's increasingly itchy and anxious performance. Impressionist tactics are also applied to the story of the nightmare lady found in "Sleeping Pills," and while the organ and the shuffling beat of "Dead Room" suggest it could turn into the '60s hit "The In-Crowd" at any moment, lyrics come from the Joy Division or Radiohead schools of expressing angst. Hawthorne may have injected his throwback songs with exciting modern slang and swag, but Waterhouse's style is arguably more interesting, blurring the lines between contemporary and classic and offering a version of Roy Orbison's great Mystery Girl album for the post-everything set. Ten tight songs and out, and the album feels like a mystery itself, but artists who nail that stoic sense of wonder, like Isaak and Orbison, don't come around often. Waterhouse is certainly of their ilk, and since he adds his own abstract touches and modern emotions to the mix, he's arguably one of the best.
ABOUT
BY OFFICIAL WEBSITE
Nick Waterhouse’s art springs from a simple idea: everybody wants to be somebody else. One of his heroes, Van Morrison, got his start covering Bobby Bland, whose own musical idol was Nat “King” Cole. In Waterhouse’s view, emulation is a journey; you never truly succeed, but as the singer, guitarist and songwriter puts it, “You become something on the way there.”
Nick was born in 1986 and grew up in Huntington Beach, a place known predominantly for its tanning salons, commercial surf culture, and UFC fighters. In his early teens, he established his musical sensibilities in the midst of the burgeoning Southern California DIY scene (Burger Records, Ty Segall, McHugh’s Distillery studio), through which he refined his own idiosyncratic perspective on the spirit of American Rhythm & Blues and Rock & Roll.
Waterhouse started performing as a teenager. “It was really motivated by fear,” he recalls. “I’m kind of an introvert, so it was an uncomfortable situation. It was a way to force a crisis.” The young artist experienced an exhilaration he’d never felt before, and hasn’t found anywhere else since. “It’s a feeling of heightened awareness that goes beyond pleasure,” Waterhouse explains. “It has something to do with seeing ahead in time and behind in time all at once. You don’t just get the immediate reward; you get the potential that rewards you the same way.”
Waterhouse explored the idea of potential on his breakthrough single, “Some Place,” a beautifully lean, propulsive track recorded at all-analog studio the Distillery and self-released in 2010 on his own Pres label. “Well, there’s someplace that I’d rather be,” Waterhouse sang in a fierce yet plaintive register. “And it’s something that’s been on my mind almost constantly.”
These days, Waterhouse is a successful recording artist, with one well-received LP and and several high-profile tours and collaborations to his name. But his latest work still 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 consummately 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.
BIKOGRAPHY
by Mark Deming, AllMusic
Described by reporter Kristina Benson as "the young man who makes old R&B," Nick Waterhouse is a songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist who has become a rising star with music which recalls the pre-rock sounds of the 1950s while possessing a modern-day level of energy and cool. Waterhouse was born in Southern California in 1987; his parents were serious music fans, and he grew up with the sounds of classic blues, soul, and rock sides by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, John Lee Hooker, and Van Morrison filling the house. As a child, he studied the trumpet, but when he was 13 he picked up the guitar, and while attending high school in Huntington Beach he formed a mod-styled R&B combo called the Intelligista. The group earned a large and loyal local following, but when Waterhouse's bandmates went off to college after the end of senior year, the group broke up and Waterhouse relocated to San Francisco. He imagined the Bay Area would be a good place to launch a new musical career, but he found the local music scene uninviting; however, he did land a job at a record store dealing in rare R&B and soul singles, where he was able to study vintage sounds of the '50s and '60s at length. Soon he began writing songs and he fell in with a group of like-minded West Coast musicians; he also discovered The Distillery, an all-analog recording facility in Costa Mesa, California, and struck up a friendship with studio owner Mike McHugh. After a number of live-in-the-studio sessions, Waterhouse released a single on his own Pres Records label, "Some Place," whose press run was quickly snapped up by collectors of modern-day R&B sounds. Waterhouse then teamed up with West Coast label Innovative Leisure, which issued the five-song EP Is That Clear in 2011. In 2012, after relocating to Los Angeles and touring Europe with his band the Tarots, Waterhouse released his first full-length album, Time's All Gone. He also began branching out into studio work, producing an album for L.A. garage-psych band the Allah-Las, before returning to his solo career with his 2014 sophomore effort Holly.
OFFICIAL SITE
''HOLLY''
MARCH 4 2014
30:05
1 High Tiding 02:46
2 This Is A Game 02:49
3 It No. 3 03:00
4 Let It Come Down 02:32
5 Sleeping Pills 03:09
6 Holly 02:39
7 Dead Room 02:48
8 Well It's Fine 03:02
9 Ain't There Something That Money Can't Buy 03:26
10 Hands On The Clock 03:51
Jeff Babko - piano
Ron Blake - trumpet
Matthew Correia - percussion
Carol Douglas - vocals
Rob Douglas - bass
Jason Freese - tenor, baritone sax
Roberta Freeman - vocals
Larry Goldings - piano, organ
Richard Gowen - drums
Brit Lauren Manor - vocals
Gavin Paddock - percussion
Anthony Polizzi - electric guitar, vibraphone, timpani, Arranger on 4, 6, 10
Andres Rentaria - percussion
Kyle Stephens - electric harpsichord, piano
Jon "JT" Thomas - organ
Francisco Torres - trombone, bass trombone
REVIEW
David Jeffries, AllMusic
Rooted in rhythm & blues with a damned Bobby Darin stance that says "I'm the Mayer Hawthorne-type singer that's perfect for adding sensual tension to any given David Lynch soundtrack," Nick Waterhouse is in fine form on his 2014 effort Holly; just don't take that Dan Fogelberg-ish album cover for music filled with '70s nostalgia. Go back a decade or two as the '50s and '60s are where this sometimes garage-rocking, sometimes Allah-Las member gets his kicks, something easily picked up on the album's title track, where a tight horn section, a standard beat combo, and plenty of wet reverb power the lusty tune. Indie Chris Isaak is the way that the cleverly titled third track "It #3" rocks over the detached lyrics, which are an almost haiku-like exploration of paranoia, with the short yet vivid words given more meaning by Waterhouse's increasingly itchy and anxious performance. Impressionist tactics are also applied to the story of the nightmare lady found in "Sleeping Pills," and while the organ and the shuffling beat of "Dead Room" suggest it could turn into the '60s hit "The In-Crowd" at any moment, lyrics come from the Joy Division or Radiohead schools of expressing angst. Hawthorne may have injected his throwback songs with exciting modern slang and swag, but Waterhouse's style is arguably more interesting, blurring the lines between contemporary and classic and offering a version of Roy Orbison's great Mystery Girl album for the post-everything set. Ten tight songs and out, and the album feels like a mystery itself, but artists who nail that stoic sense of wonder, like Isaak and Orbison, don't come around often. Waterhouse is certainly of their ilk, and since he adds his own abstract touches and modern emotions to the mix, he's arguably one of the best.
ABOUT
BY OFFICIAL WEBSITE
Nick Waterhouse’s art springs from a simple idea: everybody wants to be somebody else. One of his heroes, Van Morrison, got his start covering Bobby Bland, whose own musical idol was Nat “King” Cole. In Waterhouse’s view, emulation is a journey; you never truly succeed, but as the singer, guitarist and songwriter puts it, “You become something on the way there.”
Nick was born in 1986 and grew up in Huntington Beach, a place known predominantly for its tanning salons, commercial surf culture, and UFC fighters. In his early teens, he established his musical sensibilities in the midst of the burgeoning Southern California DIY scene (Burger Records, Ty Segall, McHugh’s Distillery studio), through which he refined his own idiosyncratic perspective on the spirit of American Rhythm & Blues and Rock & Roll.
Waterhouse started performing as a teenager. “It was really motivated by fear,” he recalls. “I’m kind of an introvert, so it was an uncomfortable situation. It was a way to force a crisis.” The young artist experienced an exhilaration he’d never felt before, and hasn’t found anywhere else since. “It’s a feeling of heightened awareness that goes beyond pleasure,” Waterhouse explains. “It has something to do with seeing ahead in time and behind in time all at once. You don’t just get the immediate reward; you get the potential that rewards you the same way.”
Waterhouse explored the idea of potential on his breakthrough single, “Some Place,” a beautifully lean, propulsive track recorded at all-analog studio the Distillery and self-released in 2010 on his own Pres label. “Well, there’s someplace that I’d rather be,” Waterhouse sang in a fierce yet plaintive register. “And it’s something that’s been on my mind almost constantly.”
These days, Waterhouse is a successful recording artist, with one well-received LP and and several high-profile tours and collaborations to his name. But his latest work still 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 consummately 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.
BIKOGRAPHY
by Mark Deming, AllMusic
Described by reporter Kristina Benson as "the young man who makes old R&B," Nick Waterhouse is a songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist who has become a rising star with music which recalls the pre-rock sounds of the 1950s while possessing a modern-day level of energy and cool. Waterhouse was born in Southern California in 1987; his parents were serious music fans, and he grew up with the sounds of classic blues, soul, and rock sides by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, John Lee Hooker, and Van Morrison filling the house. As a child, he studied the trumpet, but when he was 13 he picked up the guitar, and while attending high school in Huntington Beach he formed a mod-styled R&B combo called the Intelligista. The group earned a large and loyal local following, but when Waterhouse's bandmates went off to college after the end of senior year, the group broke up and Waterhouse relocated to San Francisco. He imagined the Bay Area would be a good place to launch a new musical career, but he found the local music scene uninviting; however, he did land a job at a record store dealing in rare R&B and soul singles, where he was able to study vintage sounds of the '50s and '60s at length. Soon he began writing songs and he fell in with a group of like-minded West Coast musicians; he also discovered The Distillery, an all-analog recording facility in Costa Mesa, California, and struck up a friendship with studio owner Mike McHugh. After a number of live-in-the-studio sessions, Waterhouse released a single on his own Pres Records label, "Some Place," whose press run was quickly snapped up by collectors of modern-day R&B sounds. Waterhouse then teamed up with West Coast label Innovative Leisure, which issued the five-song EP Is That Clear in 2011. In 2012, after relocating to Los Angeles and touring Europe with his band the Tarots, Waterhouse released his first full-length album, Time's All Gone. He also began branching out into studio work, producing an album for L.A. garage-psych band the Allah-Las, before returning to his solo career with his 2014 sophomore effort Holly.
OFFICIAL SITE
