Description
The title of the sixth album from Californian singer-songwriter Nick Waterhouse is more than just the name of one of its 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 its a lot. Recorded by Mark Neill (Black Keys; Los Straightjackets; Dave Cobb) in Valdosta, Georgia, its a song-cycle of sorts, the arc of the album telling a tale of a city and its denizens.
The result is a record that offers up new riches and fresh perspectives with every spin. From the hidden corners of Hide & Seek and the roadhouse soul of Play To Win to the primitive, attitudinal, chugging two-chord thrill of Late In The Garden, it builds inexorably to the drama of the title track and pulsing roll-and-rock of the final pay off, Unreal, Immaterial. Play it once and it sounds immediately like a collection of great songs. Play it again and you will and it feels like a novel or film slowly unveiling its secrets, kaleidoscopic in its narrative complexity. Especially during this record, I started just becoming what Allen Ginsberg called a pure breath, says the artist. I was becoming pure breath with my ideas.
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