The soul-revival arc, from Sharon Jones to Mayer Hawthorne, takes the mid-'60s as a starting point and the late-'70s as an endpoint. On his debut album,
Time's All Gone, Nick Waterhouse draws a bead on the earliest geniuses of soul — Ray Charles and Solomon Burke — and blasts them with hipster cool, even as he sings like a wiry punk at heart. This California kid can hold his own against a ménage de sexpot backup singers, a sweaty cavern of slap-back reverb and a baritone sax with the tone of a barge honking all the way to New Orleans. There's no turning back when you're this rock 'n' soul gone.
Make or Break: Waterhouse recently scored a slot on Live From Daryl's House, the Daryl Hall-produced broadcast that helped launch the far more polished Fitz and the Tantrums.
