Earlier this month, Oliver Kalb announced the latest Bellows album, The Rose Gardener — the follow-up to 2016’s excellent Fist & Palm — with two new tracks, “Denouement” and “What Can I Tell You About The World?.” Coupled with “Housekeeping” from last year, we’re getting a pretty good sense of the album as a whole, and today Kalb is sharing its title track.

It’s an intricate blend of sliding acoustics and sharp rock bursts that builds and builds while maintaining a sense of patience. Kalb paints a self-reflective character study that uses a growing garden as a metaphor for creativity and keeping engaged with yourself.

In a note that accompanies the album announcement, Kalb talked a little about the album’s recurring rose imagery: “I imagined this character and his practice of tending to a rose that seems destined to perish in ice, who recognizes the futility of the work but nevertheless goes out every day to tend to the dying plant,” he writes.

Listen to it via The Alternative below.

TOUR DATES:
03/01 Albany, NY @ Chateau
03/02 Kingston, NY @ BSP
03/03 Boston, MA @ O’Brien’s#
03/07 Brooklyn, NY @ Rough Trade (Album Release)
03/08 Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA#
03/09 Washington, DC @ Comet Ping Pong#
03/10 Asheville, NC @ The Mothlight*
03/11 Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR*
03/12 Little Rock, AR @ White Water Tavern*
03/13 Denton, TX @ J&J’s Pizza*
03/14-19 Austin, TX @ SXSW*
03/17 New Orleans, LA @ The Starlight*
03/18 Atlanta, GA @ 529*
03/19 Durham, NC @ Duke Coffeehouse*
03/20 Baltimore, MD @ Joe Squared*
* = w/ Another Michael
# = w/ Shannen Moser

The Rose Gardener is out 2/22 via Topshelf. Pre-order it here.