Nick Waterhouse has a retro soul, his music owes everything to the 50s and early 60s but he speaks like your average twenty something guy, with a real confidence and a clear diction. He and his large ensemble, the Tarots (they were 8 on stage) were performing at the Getty Center for the ‘Saturdays Off the 405’ series.
Any retro term, from vintage to old-school, vintage, or revivalist has been used to describe his style, but he is not interested by reproducing the good old times, or even by the crooning of a Mayer Hawthorne for example; his sound is much rawer and nervous, and the music is overall stripped down to one guitar and saxophones, with an important rhythm section (with bass, drums and percussion), and vocals, assured by his convincing voice and the vibrant back-up vocals of his two doo-wop female singers, who could have auditioned for Ray Charles in another life. The whole set breathed through old R&B, with clear reminiscence of a period that none of the persons on stage has even known.
The saxophones almost dominated the music at times, marking the tempo, constantly adding punch with their squawks in series, responding to Nick's guitar and his light dose of garage rock and touch of surfing, whereas the rest was all voices and rhythms with bongos and tambourines, light drumming and bass. In these times of electronic and ultra-layered music, they were going back to more simple things, and may be more authentic?
The Getty courtyard had filled up with people of every age, and that may be the trick of Waterhouse’s music, as it can touch with the same efficiency, twenty-something Coachella hipsters – yes there effectively were some guys still wearing their wristbands – and septuagenarians dancing on the side of the stage.
There certainly was a party feeling, a smoky club ambiance coming straight from an old black and white movie, and Nick Waterhouse, with his clean Buddy Holly look (the vintage glasses!), white shirt and beige pants lost his cool a few times with some bold screams and furious guitar solos. Beside this, it was rather well behaved on stage as in the crowd.
‘I didn’t think I could be here one day, not even in my wildest dreams’ said Waterhouse, before thanking his family, who was present, and introducing a new tune called ‘Sleeping Pills’, which is not on his record ‘Time’s All Gone’.
The sound was raw but meticulously executed, while the show was dynamically brushing the late 50s-early 60s without falling for the old clichés, successfully building a real authenticity with Nick Waterhouse’s cool attitude,… a difficult thing to accomplish!
He introduced his last song ‘Is That Clear’ as one he had written in Southern California when he was still a kid… adding he was still coming back to this same place, musically speaking, and continuing with a quote from Lester Bangs ‘I believe in rock 'n' roll but I don't believe in Rock 'n' Roll’… I certainly can’t speak for Bangs, but there are a lot of chances that he would have appreciated Waterhouse’s anti-nostalgia and very alive music.
Setlist
Don’t You Forget It
Say I Wanna Know
Ain’t There Something Money Can’t Buy
Sleepin’ Pills
If You Want Trouble
Raina
Palm Of Your Hand
I Can Only Give Everything
Indian Love Call
That Place
Some Place
It’s Your Voodoo working
Time’s All Gone
Is That Clear
