The Brooklyn-based musician Oliver Kalb makes acoustic DIY music under the name Bellows. His records are simultaneously homespun and ambitious. You can tell that you're hearing one guy putting music together obsessively in his spare time, but the tracks themselves are packed with melodic and stylistic ideas. You could hear that in the last Bellows LP, 2022's Next Of Kin, and you can hear it in the four advance singles from the upcoming Bellows double album.
In a couple of months, Bellows will release Que Bello!, which spreads 18 tracks over an hour. Kalb recorded it with collaborators Jack Greenleaf, Ian Cory, and Frank Meadows and a home studio in Woodstock, New York. Emily Reo sings backup on some songs, and I think she's the only voice we hear on "Dog Barks," one of the four new tracks that Bellows shared yesterday.
"Dog Barks" is a fun, experimental pile-up of multi-tracked harmonies, some of which are Auto-Tune androids. The other three songs — "To The God Nemesis," "Learning How," and "Fung Wah Bus" — are lush, layered works of indie folk that take some really interesting stylistic left turns. I like all of them, but my immediate favorite is "Fung Wah Bus," possibly because the lyrical detour about "the death of the music blog" is relevant to my interests. Below, check out all four songs and the Que Bello! tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Chrysanthemum Flowers"
02 "Delta9 Self Immolation"
03 "Venetian Glass"
04 "Better Things"
05 "FCA"
06 "In Green"
07 "To the God Nemesis"
08 "Learning How"
09 "Fung Wah Bus"
10 "Zoomin Aston Martin"
11 "Swing into London"
12 "Dog Barks"
13 "Ease into Myself Again"
14 "Give You All My Love"
15 "Bureaucratic Tower"
16 "Midnight's Passing"
17 "(Aug 17 2021)"
18 "(Dead in Tiburon)"
Que Bello! is out 6/12 on Bloody Knuckles/Many Hats.
