For reasons that Nick Waterhouse understands, his formative years often get lost in the narrative when he finds himself profiled. When you’ve made a name for yourself playing impeccably retro R&B while wearing pressed clothes that the editors of GQ: Motown Edition would appreciate, the last thing people expect is someone who understands music didn’t start and end with James Brown and Otis Redding.

As records like his new and thoroughly great full-length Never Twice make abundantly clear, Waterhouse knows his history, from the giants to lesser-known trailblazers like Roy Head and Little Willie John. But his knowledge of ancient history doesn’t stop there.

“Obviously, the way that I get written about is a neat and tidy narrative that doesn’t have any room for any deviation,” the wonderfully open singer-guitarist reveals, on the line from his one-time hometown of Huntington Beach, California. “But I grew up around the punk-rock thing, and the punk-rock community.”

As a kid, he had old Black Flag cassettes handed down to him by his father, who had seen the pioneering giants of American hardcore back in the day. But by the time Waterhouse was in his teens, seminal O.C. punk legends like T.S.O.L., the Vandals, and Adolescents had either disbanded or had their thunder stolen by Hot Topic pop-punk acts. That led him on a quest for something more authentic. He’d find it in a brand of raw and unvarnished R&B that made labels like Stax legendary in the ’60s.

“After the 1990s, punk rock obviously became a global brand of platinum-selling records,” Waterhouse says. “A lot of stuff, especially when I was 13 or 14, felt really passé and like it belonged to the previous generation. Honestly, the way that I felt about punk rock was the way that punk rockers felt about Yes or E.L.O. in 1977. But I was always a really curious kid, so I was really engaged in the independent music scene that came after that.”

That curiosity, and a fascination with the DIY aesthetic, would eventually lead the 30-year-old to press his first single “Some Place” on vinyl and assemble the final product by hand. Waterhouse’s old-school approach to business—not to mention his penchant for crisp corduroy pants and button-down shirts—would eventually cause some to wonder if he placed more of a premium on style than substance.

Which, is, of course, fucking idiotic. One of the great records of 2016, Never Twice has Waterhouse bumping and grinding through the greasy “The Old Place”, reaching for the Brylcreem on the doo-wop delight “Katchi”, and hitting the Lost Weekend Lounge with a Manhattan in hand for the piano-adorned “Lucky Once”. “Tracy” finds the guitarist ripping things up like he’s gunning for a spot on the boxed set Loud, Fast & Out of Control: The Wild Sounds of ’50s Rock, while the drum violence at the end of “Stanyan Street” can be attributed to his generosity as a band leader. He notes that on Never Twice he brought veteran players into the studio and then encouraged them to be as creative as they liked.

Waterhouse acknowledges there are times when he feels misunderstood; he describes 2012’s raw and garagey Holly as a reaction to the way he was sometimes perceived after touring for his debut Time’s All Gone.

“Holly was a pretty dark record, personally for me,” he says with a laugh. “That’s like my drug record. Not that I was abusing drugs, but I was definitely having to take a lot of Xanax for panic attacks around then. When I hear the songs I also hear how hard it was to make that record. A lot of that record was about ideas and the disconnect between the ideas that you have, and the reality of what the execution of those ideas is going to be. Which can be really cruel. Almost a nightmare.”

But not nearly as cruel as the fact that Waterhouse has yet to break anywhere near as big as acts like the Black Keys or Jack White, neither of which have ever been ghettoized as being singularly obsessed with a time they never knew. One seriously has to wonder if it’s all about the clothes.

“From the beginning of my career, I kind of wondered what the alternate reality would be if I dressed not like myself,” Waterhouse admits with a laugh. “Everyone perceives me dressing like myself as me dressed not like myself. I always wonder, if I’d shown up my first time at South By Southwest wearing a beard and a jean jacket, how my songs would be perceived. I would have a Pitchfork review for sure.”

Nick Waterhouse plays the Cobalt on Wednesday (September 28).