Nick Waterhouse

Review: Nick Waterhouse’s Time’s All Gone

Nick Waterhouse: Time's All GoneNick Waterhouse: Time’s All Gone (Innovative Leisure, 5/1/12)

“Some Place”

[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Nick-Waterhouse-Some-Place.mp3|titles=Nick Waterhouse: “Some Place”]

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.