Nick Waterhouse - Promenade Blue

 

180-gram vinyl

Plated and pressed at Quality Record Pressings!

Nick Waterhouse takes the color blue as his hue of choice on Promenade Blue

A century after F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby chose green to represent longing and unrequited love in the Roaring Twenties, Nick Waterhouse in the 2020s takes the color blue as his hue of choice on Promenade Blue.

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.

That's the world of Promenade Blue (180 gram LP, pressed at Quality Record Pressings) — one that is vivid and magnetic, buoyed by both light and density due to Nick's newfound collaboration with producer Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart). It's not Gatsby's New York in the 1920s, it's Waterhouse's California in the 2020s. Nick makes that crystal clear throughout the record but particularly on "Santa Ana (1986)," where he wryly sings, "Not from New York / And I never was / I'm from California." With that, he answers all questions about place and setting...but as anyone who's ever listened to a Waterhouse record knows: time, though clearly pegged to the dawn of this new decade, is a more malleable concept. Where he is is clear. When he is varies.

Promenade Blue represents Waterhouse's finest hour as a writer and bandleader — leveraging the musical partnerships he has built over many years to put something forth that is so fully realized and felt that it sparkles beatifically, reverberating with energy, heart, creativity, and vibe from start to finish.

Side A

1. Place Names

2. The Spanish Look

3. Vincentine

4. Medicine

5. Very Blue

Side B

1. Silver Bracelet

2. Promène Bleu

3. Fugitive Lover

4. Minor Time

5. B. Santa Ana, 1986

6. To Tell

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