At the beginning of last year, Band To Watch Florist released their debut full-length, The Birds Outside Sang, an evocative portrait that started off sounding like someone on the outside looking in and gradually opened up and blossomed as it went along. It was preceded the sprightly and warm Holdly EP, which was actually written after the album, and it’s around there where “What I Wanted To Hold,” the first single from Florist’s sophomore album, picks up.

It’s minimal and modest, simple strumming and ornamental decoration held together by Emily Sprague’s purring vocals. Sprague’s writing has a painterly quality to it — Florist’s new album, If Blue Could Be Happiness, takes a particular interest in colors: the way they reflect moods, evoke memories, represent experiences. Her new songs sound like what you see when you close your eyes real tight, and on this one she’s remembering home and trying to hold on to whatever she can. “I can close my eyes and return to the home I remember in a blur of sights and smells and sounds of old,” she sings. “But it’s not what I wanted to hold.”

“‘What I Wanted To Hold’ was the first song that I wrote with the color motif for the new record, and really set the whole thing in motion. It’s a contemplative journey mostly about impermanence and how important it is to recognize that as the dominant theme of life,” Sprague explained to The Fader. “It also deals with the melancholy of remembering and the little associations (colors) that we make to people and places so to hold on to these things that are either already gone, nearing an end, or just beginning.”

Listen below.

Tracklist:
01 “Blue Mountain Road”
02 “What I Wanted To Hold”
03 “The Fear Of Losing This”
04 “Understanding Light”
05 “Eyes In The Sun”
06 “Glowing Brightly”
07 “Thank You Light”
08 “If Blue Could Be Happiness”
09 “Instrumental 3″
10 “Red Bird”

Tour Dates:
09/20 Burlington, VT @ ArtsRiot *
09/21 Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB *
09/22 Toronto, ON @ Velvet Underground *
09/24 Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop *
09/26 Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck *
09/27 Oklahoma City, OK @ 89th Street (OKC) *
09/28 Houston, TX @ Walter’s Downtown *
09/29 Austin, TX @ Barracuda *
09/30 Dallas, TX @ Club Dada *
10/02 El Paso, TX @ The Perch at Tricky Falls *
10/03 Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress *
10/05 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echoplex *
10/06 San Diego, CA @ The Irenic *
10/07 Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room *
10/10 Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst (Atrium) *
10/11 San Francisco, CA @ Slim’s *
10/12 Reno, NV @ The Holland Project *
10/14 Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater *
10/16 Iowa City, IA @ Gabe’s *
10/17 Sioux Falls, SD @ Total Drag Records *
10/18 Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium *
10/19 Minneapolis, MN@ 7th St Entry *
10/20 Milwaukee, WI@ The Back Room at Colectivo *
10/21 Madison, WI @ The Rathskeller
10/22 Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen
10/24 Washington, DC @ DC9
10/25 Philadelphia, PA @ Boot & Saddle
10/26 Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East (Upstairs)
10/27 Brooklyn, NY @ The Park Church Co-Op
* w/ Pinegrove and Lomelda

If Blue Could Be Happiness is out 9/29 via Double Double Whammy. Pre-order it here.