There are fewer more stereotypical tropes in music than the country song about a dead dog, but H.C. McEntire is not exactly a country singer, and “Rows Of Clover” is not your average fallen pet lament. McEntire says the track — the latest from her upcoming Every Acre following “Soft Crook” and “Dovetail” — is about the loss of a “steadfast hound.” It’s a hell of a song, a soulful folk-rock outpouring that builds to a slicing, moaning guitar solo over waves of tempestuous piano and grooving bass. And as McEntire’s statement implies, the lyrics are as deep and complex as the arrangement:

As an artist, if what I’m after is meaning and understanding, then vulnerability is how I find my edges. In my experience, if that pursuit is honest and unfiltered, on some level it will also be uncomfortable. Every Acre encouraged a slow observation of everything around me — great heights and vast depths, immeasurable static, and some fragments still coming into focus.

The chorus lyrics in “Rows of Clover” arrived before anything else on this album. They are dark and straightforward, unapologetic — a body in pain, a broken spirit, a tired heart. I needed to acknowledge my grief and depression in an unmistakable way; to name it and know the feeling of it being lifted by my lungs. In contrast, and written much later, the verses offer observations of a more poetic kind, kneeling beside that same garden bed: hunters planting millet and rye; a fawn born in the front yard; sundown through cedars; burn barrels roaring orange; fresh pink ribbons tagging the ridgeline around me. From the center, looking out — I sowed the red clover, to start over again.

Listen below.

Every Acre is out 1/27 on Merge.