Nathaniel Bellows “Swan and Wolf” (Independent 2018)

Polymath Bellows has released an album and accompanying art work designed to give the listener a whole artistic experience. This reviewer is fairly unimpressed. In order to arrest the attention of an audience, an artist needs to corral some fairly random items but principally we need decent songs and production that highlights the source material in an appropriate way which reflects the artist’s intentions and gives the potential listener a way of accessing the deeper meanings and understandings to be gleaned from the art. [this is possibly the longest sentence ever written on this site – Ed]

Unfortunately this album trips over these fairly basic hurdles. The songs are relentlessly similar but do not grab the listener as they tend to repeat the same ground over and over again. Indeed even if the songs were more captivating they would be hampered by the apparent recording of the vocals in a small cupboard.

Nathanial Bellows is a novelist, poet and graphic artist and indeed the illustrations within this album’s lyric sheet attest to his strength in this area. He is not an easy listen and nor should he be but he does need a stronger sense of the quality of his material. This album is not for casual listeners.

5/10
5/10

Summary

Poet, novelist and artist delivers earnest album of imagery

About Keith Hargreaves 460 Articles
Riding the one eyed horse into dead town the scales fell from his eyes. Music was the only true god at once profane and divine The dust blew through his mind as he considered the offering... And then he scored it out of ten and waited for the world to wake up
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