{"id":4276,"date":"2016-02-05T12:33:46","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T17:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/?p=4276"},"modified":"2016-02-23T12:21:25","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T17:21:25","slug":"nathaniel-bellows-the-old-illusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/nathaniel-bellows-the-old-illusions\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathaniel Bellows <br>The Old Illusions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/nathaniel_bellows-the_old_illusions.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4277\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4277\" src=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/nathaniel_bellows-the_old_illusions.jpg\" alt=\"Nathaniel Bellows, The Old Illusions\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/nathaniel_bellows-the_old_illusions.jpg 250w, https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/nathaniel_bellows-the_old_illusions-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a>Nathaniel Bellows\u2019 <i>The Old Illusions<\/i> (Harmon Blunt Music) casts this acclaimed poet and librettist in a singer-songwriter mode reminiscent of Greg Brown. His lush, warm baritone and acoustic guitar are balanced precariously on arrangements full of spiderweb shadows and glittering edges.<\/p>\n<p>The dark thrum running through the veins of Bellows\u2019 songs is questioning. Vocals swirl and wrench around his center of gravity, rising and falling, wordless notes and lines congealing into words, most notably an echoing male voice flatly repeating the word \u201clie,\u201d pulling the narrative down from certainty to doubt. Instruments appear, throw gleaming daggers that shatter into texture, and disappear. \u201cThe Reason,\u201d with its suspended piano and circling, surging guitar, orbits choruses tied together by alliteration and assonance, underlining the struggle. Bellows\u2019 begged question, \u201cDid somebody somewhere just use my name in the way one would say \u2018I now know me?\u2019\u201d turns into a growl when it changes to, \u201cCould somebody somewhere just soothe my brain? The thundering thoughts and the silence.\u201d On \u201cWhat Would You Do,\u201d Bellows peels apart a small town scandal like an onion, starting with the finding of two corpses, slipping between the heads of various characters and the concrete detail of the town. Along the way, he talks about regret as poison and the impossibility of finding one\u2019s way home.<\/p>\n<p>Even in the heart of the frustration breathing through these songs, there&#8217;s a wild delight in the sensual quality of language. In closer \u201cThe Calm,\u201d Bellows cartwheels through lines like, \u201cIn the calm and the psalm and the salt that&#8217;s thrown over the shoulder of the saddest of soldiers who\u2019s carving a doll from the soap in the stall of his horse.\u201d <i>The Old Illusions<\/i> is a moving record that reconstructs the past through what was handed down and, more, what we still tell ourselves. There isn&#8217;t a wasted note, inflection, or moment here. Indeed, there is no time for showy virtuosity when there&#8217;s so much to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nathaniel Bellows\u2019 <i>The Old Illusions<\/i> casts this acclaimed poet and librettist in a singer-songwriter mode reminiscent of Greg Brown. His lush, warm baritone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[34,1584,1583],"class_list":["post-4276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","tag-album-review","tag-harmon-blunt-music","tag-nathaniel-bellows"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Nathaniel Bellows The Old Illusions - The Agit Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/nathaniel-bellows-the-old-illusions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nathaniel Bellows The Old Illusions - The Agit Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nathaniel Bellows\u2019 The Old Illusions casts this acclaimed poet and librettist in a singer-songwriter mode reminiscent of Greg Brown. 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