Hanni El Khatib wants to live…dangerously. That’s the only explanation for the video for “Family,” the first single from his upcoming, Dan Auerbach-produced album, Head in the Dirt. Featuring sex, violence, booze, reckless motorcycling, BDSM, whitey-tightys, and grindhouse-style visuals, it’s Easy Rider by way of Kill Bill, directed by Nick Walker.
DJ-turned-front-man Nick Waterhouse plays old-school rhythm and blues with the verve and charisma of his age (25). He wears Buddy Holly glasses, sweater vests, and two-piece suits, but there’s nothing cheesy or overly revivalist about his swinging tunes.
The phenomena of the digger-turned-frontman is nothing new — often the youth of a record fiend leads to a life on stage. It’s just that, well, these days, the digging is deeper and the diggers are a bit more passionate about sounding just like their heroes. The wonder is that sometimes they do just that.
Don’t let the Buddy Holly spectacles put you off San Francisco’s 25-year-old Nick Waterhouse — whom we correctly guessed was a record-digging DJ even before reading up on him, just like, ahem, soul revivalist Mayer Hawthorne. This young guy loves the sound of records as much as the music on them — and what he lacks in originality he makes up for in fervent, giddy exploration of sounds and styles nearly half a century old.