The title of the sixth album from the Californian singer-songwriter is
more than just the name of one of its dozen immaculate tracks. The
Fooler is both a clue and a red herring. The Fooler is the observed and
the observer, narrator and subject, truth and lie. The Fooler is the shadow
and reflection of a city the artist knows sufficiently well to wander with
his eyes closed, and a place which very possibly never even existed. The
Fooler is not so much an unreliable narrator as a constantly shifting
perspective. The Fooler is the new album by Nick Waterhouse, and it’s a lot.
Nick Waterhouse is a modern American singer-songwriter who released
his debut album, Time’s All Gone, in 2012. In his music you will hear
echoes of things you might think you know, or believe you remember,
filtered through the lens of a unique artistic perspective. You will hear
rhythm and blues, garage rock, radio soul and wee-small-hours balladry
– but reconfigured, made new. In Waterhouse’s music, the time is both
now and then. The past is the present is the future. The sound is classic
yet unclassifiable.
“I actually find it very fascinating,” he says. “I’m like, Where did this
come from? Especially during this record, I started just becoming what
Allen Ginsburg called a pure breath. I was becoming pure breath with
my ideas.”