Twenty-five years is a long time. You can switch careers a few times, go through a couple of existential crises, get a mortgage, get divorced, get married again, and start heading for a second divorce. Or you can just start living for yourself and doing what you want. Nick Bellerose chose the latter, which feels almost unfathomable in our frantic era, obsessed with a never-ending stream of content and likes.

His album The Only Way Is Through enters the world like a neat journal that’s been sitting on a shelf for so many years its pages have yellowed and the ink has nearly faded. And now someone finally decides to open it and quietly read it out loud. Time has already done its work, but what matters more is how the author chose to show us these pages.

photo by Chris Goodyear

The eight tracks on his debut album play softly, without trying to grab or hold your attention with clever hooks or choruses aimed at a wide audience. Instead, Bellerose picks up a guitar, sits down in a chair—maybe with a cooling cup of coffee or a half-empty glass of whiskey in front of him—and starts to play. His intent? To finally set free the stories that have stayed silent in his head for far too long.

They come out slightly uneven, with quiet pauses and halts, with cautious steps back to glance once more at the past. His songs carry the sadness of lost relationships, but there’s also a clear sense of hope, born from simply accepting what has happened. That’s where Nick Bellerose’s quiet strength lies: he doesn’t try to convince you that he’s wiser now, stronger, or somehow above it all—he just keeps going, one step at a time, without rushing.

Somewhere Between Light and Shadow

Sometimes it seems that good music is like an evening walk through a nearly empty park. The streetlights are soft and warm, a faint sadness hides in the shadows of the trees, and somewhere in the distance a street musician quietly plays. That’s the kind of atmosphere I catch while listening to how Nicholas Bellerose opens the album with the track ‘Our Love Is Gone’. His voice is a slow confession, filled with longing and regret, and that particular moment when you finally let your feelings go. The light backing vocals add transparency to the melody, like something hovering—barely there, yet enough to stir something deep. A quiet, uneasy ambient hum runs underneath, making the picture less straightforward, deeper.

photo by Chris Goodyear

After this calm beginning, ‘I’m Going Through’ and ‘Hold Me’ tell a different story—one that’s clear and bright. Bellerose doesn’t try to complicate anything: his voice comes through plain and open. In these songs, it’s his honesty that stands out, and the music doesn’t get in the way of the emotion. It’s here that you start to see just how skilled Nicholas is at letting the melody speak for itself.

In ‘Walk Like A Man’, his voice gains depth and space, the acoustics ripple outward, rolling gently from chord to chord like footsteps across an old wooden floor. The next track, ‘That Night’, shifts into something almost transparent, where the voice fades into the background, leaving a chill across the skin. It’s as if the melody travels through the walls of an old apartment, from somewhere in the past, brushing the soul with a thin film of sadness and peace at the same time.

After that soft introspection comes ‘Every Time’, which unexpectedly shakes up the album with a burst of energy. The drums and guitar sound bold, and here Bellerose seems to snap into motion, inviting the listener to move forward with the music. This track carries a charge of unexpected optimism and even drive, making the transition into the final songs stand out more vividly.

The closing pair, ‘Camila’ and ‘Since I Laid My Eyes On You’, feels like a carefully built finale—first pulling you into a kind of hypnotic melancholy, then gently leading you back into the light. ‘Camila’ is five minutes of slow, drifting beauty. The notes dissolve into the air, and Bellerose’s voice becomes almost tangible, softly filling the space around. Here, you can feel the art-house edge of his work.

The final track, ‘Since I Laid My Eyes On You’, brings a new confidence to his voice. The melody guides things forward, and the light keys add a sense of air. It doesn’t close the album with a period—it ends with an ellipsis, suggesting that everything experienced wasn’t for nothing, and what comes next might be just as meaningful.

His melancholy will feel familiar to anyone who’s ever wondered whether they made the right choices in life. And while many artists try to push us forward, urging us to forget what hurt, The Only Way Is Through does the opposite. It asks you to pause, to look back, to feel, to let the memories pass through you—and only then move on. This album won’t soundtrack your party, but it fits perfectly into a quiet evening when you want to sit still, feel a little sad, or do absolutely nothing. Twenty-five years is a long time, but some stories need exactly that to be ready. Nick Bellerose understands that better than most.

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