Nick Waterhouse Announces New Album & Shares Two New Singles

Photo by Benjamin Heath

Nick Waterhouse is back with two brand new singles and videos for “Hide And Seek" and "The Fooler” out April 1st via Innovative Leisure / PRES. Recorded and produced by Mark Neill (Black Keys; Los Straightjackets; Dave Cobb) in Valdosta, Georgia, the album is a song-cycle of sorts, the arc of the album telling a tale of a city and its denizens. A former room in a ballet school, Soil of the South is in the great tradition of American studios such as Chess and Sun.

“There’s a phase shift that occurred writing this record,” says Waterhouse. “I had a breakthrough in how to tell stories in songs. It’s like an epiphany. I started realizing how I could bend time in these words and a lot of the things that weave through the record. I have a perspective as a narrator now, instead of being the occupant of the songs.”

Hide And Seek was initially conceived in the summer of 2021 in California, looking out at the coast of the Long Beach harbor. It was a surreal afternoon as massive freighters hung on the horizon, like spaceships in some science fiction film waiting to invade the coast. The whole effect threw into contrast the largeness and terror of the inner life that an insecure relationship can hold.

The Fooler is about how your own heart and your memories can betray you in really nice ways.

“Making this record was like going to see the kung fu master on the mountain,” says Waterhouse. “You can probably draw a through line from my first record to this one, but this is something else entirely. The sonic landscape Mark designed is so much further into space, with reverb and depth.”

Listen and watch “Hide And Seek” and “The Fooler” below.