Nick Waterhouse shares new single “B. Santa Ana, 1986”

16/03/2021

12 2 minutes read

Available across platforms here

New album Promenade Blue out April 9 on Innovative Leisure

Stream previous singles: “Place Names” “Medicine” “Very Blue”

Photo Credit: Jared Chambers

“Waterhouse manages something timeless with his newest work, reframing well-worn sounds and styles through the rose-colored lens of nostalgia. Even today, it sounds fresh and vital.” – Under The Radar

“The combination is entrancing—itching to be listened to live.” – Interview Magazine

“Having tapped garage god Ty Segall and jazz and blues dynamo Mose Allison for his latest release, Waterhouse straddles the line between rock grit and smooth, sultry R&B” – Esquire

“Nick Waterhouse is a soul man, through and through.” – Rolling Stone

“it’s a shot of pure joy” – Pitchfork

“nods towards the timeless while still adding something distinctly new.” – Clash

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic work The Great Gatsby came to represent the Roaring Twenties, an era of decadence and spiritual vacuousness, using the color green to represent longing and hope for the future. Nick Waterhousetakes the color blue as his hue of choice as he takes a spiritual look to the past on new album Promenade Blue due out April 9 on Innovative Leisure. It’s not Gatsby’s New York in the 1920s, it’s Waterhouse’s California in the 2020s.

Today, he makes this crystal clear with swaggering vocal stylings and powerhouse delivery on new single “B. Santa Ana (1986)”, debuted alongside SPIN Magazine “A Day in the Life” feature.

Reverberating with energy, heart, and creativity, lead singles “Place Names”, “Very Blue”, “Medicine” continue to build anticipation for the new record and sparked critical praise across NPR, Under The Radar, BrooklynVegan, Clash and more.

Waterhouse says: “I’ve spent a great deal of my time wandering through the world, and being mistaken for coming from somewhere else. Certain people seem better at branding themselves based on a sort of… spectacular regional mythos. And what I have observed in regards to my own pedigree is what I could only describe as a lifelong superficial conception of the Californian identity. I got to thinking – what’s a regional identity anyways? Especially in this digitally flattened era. How funny, I thought, would it be to turn this little droll talking blues I had been demoing into an off-handed delivered ‘anthem’ chorus (“uh, I don’t mind)? How Californian?”

Listen / Share “B. Santa Ana, 1986”

In Nick’s musical and lyrical world, blue is a refraction of his life and memories — shadowing a deep, spiritual San Francisco that fostered his musical vocabulary but has now been stamped out irrevocably; evoking the endless tours, marathon recording sessions, and highs and lows of success he’s experienced in his decade-long career; conjuring romances that were doomed, loves that lingered, and hope for future days of parity and partnership; summoning spirits of people who have gone but permeate his mind forever.

The world of Promenade Blue represents rebirth and reinvigoration as well as a clarity of purpose. It is vivid and magnetic, buoyed by both light and density due to Nick’s newfound collaboration with co-producer Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart).