Fifteen years in, The Head and the Heart are still evolving – and with ‘Aperture,’ they find clarity through connection, creating their most emotionally expansive and sonically adventurous album yet. Atwood Magazine spoke to the band about the creation and catharsis, the hope and humanity of their sixth studio album – a record that feels like both a homecoming and a new beginning.

‘Aperture’ – The Head and the Heart

Open your ears, open your eyes, open your heart, and take it all in: The good, the bad, the joy, the ache, the love – everything this incredible life has to offer.

I will have many more words to say about sixth studio album over time, but what I will say for now is this:

Fifteen years into their storied career, The Head and the Heart’s folk-laced music continues to be as fresh and fun as it is free-spirited and philosophically profound. Released on May 9th via Verve Forecast, their sixth studio album Aperture is “an invitation to wake up in the present moment recognizing that it is all we have, in all its contradictions of beauty and pain, joy and despair, unfathomable vastness and impermanence,” per band member Matty Gervais.

In practice, that translates to rich, warm harmonies, radiant melodies, thought-provoking lyrics, invigorating instrumentals, and instantly memorable singalongs – all delivered with the passion and seasoned strength of professionals who, despite their years of doing this, continue to find inspiration in themselves and in their everyday.

“It felt like LP1 all over again,” Gervais tells Atwood Magazine. “We weren’t thinking about outcomes or expectations. We just followed the moment and let the songs show us what they wanted to be.”

What’s perhaps most striking about Aperture is its range: While songs like “After the Setting Sun,” “Time With My Sins,” and “Arrow” unpack intimate reflections on identity, purpose, and life’s greater meaning through a familiar, sun-kissed sound, The Head and the Heart spend a great deal of this record trying on new clothes – both musical and topical.

“I think our fans didn’t see this record coming – and honestly, I didn’t either,” lead singer Jonathan Russell reflects. “It surprised me in the best way.”

From track to track, Aperture radiates with moments of musical, emotional, and lyrical impact.

The urgent and emotionally charged “Cop Car” is an obvious standout: Russell’s voice is at its rawest as he sings from the back of a police cruiser, angry and scared, unsure of his present and fearful for his future: “I’m riding in a cop car tonight, looking outside as the blinks go by, wondering how we gonna die.” Not only do The Head and the Heart bring a flicker of humanity and empathy to those whom society so often turns a blind eye, but they do so with grace, tact, charm, angst, and a beautiful middle finger to the boys in blue.

“I didn’t write that song. It just… came out of me,” Russell says of “Cop Car,” which was recorded in a single take. “I didn’t even know if I could sing like that again. It was something that had to come out – like a wrecking ball inside me.”

Take me on a boat ride, babe
Drop me in the middlе of the sea
Make mе swim home, tell me I’m wrong
At least I’ll be clean for a week

Riding in a cop car tonight
Lotta time to think what’s right
Oh, my wife, another in time
I wonder how she’ll stick through the ride?

– “Cop Car,” The Head and the Heart

And that’s far from Aperture‘s only bright spot: From the lush, hypnotic, and heartrending “Pool Break” and the euphoric, life-affirming “Jubilee” to the feel-good reverie “Fire Escape” (a truly classic THATH tune) and the hopeful “Beg, Steal, Borrow,” The Head and the Heart’s sixth studio album proves to be a meaningful, memorable, altogether moving ray of light in 2025’s musical landscape.

In fact, it’s songs like “Pool Break” and “Jubilee” that prove to be some of the album’s biggest highlights – two special songs that find The Head and the Heart expanding the sonic world longtime fans and listeners have come to know and love through bold vocal harmonies and emotionally potent topics that hit hard and leave a lasting impression.

“I kept imagining this image of a little boy sitting alone in a huge field, carrying a large pain,” Russell says of “Pool Break.” “Waiting for someone – a father figure – to come put a hand on his shoulder and say, ‘I’ve got you.’ But that never happens, and so the world stays big and scary. That feeling has lived in me forever.”

A little boy’s story, talking to his father
Telling him the things that he wish he would’ve taught him
Like pleasure and pain, the smell of the rain
Thunder, and the lightning comes in

Hold me back, don’t hold me under this pain
I can’t keep from falling
Hold me back, out on an endless track
I’ve never gotten over

– “Pool Break,” The Head and the Heart

As for “Jubilee,” Gervais laughs as he describes the guitar tuning they stumbled into during that session: “D-A-D-A-A-F#. And all of us are “da-das” now – it was a very appropriate tuning for this record!”

The track “Finally Free,” written and sung by band member Charity Rose Thielen – and one of the album’s softest, most soul-stirring moments – is a personal favorite of both Russell and Gervais. “That song takes the air out of the room,” Russell says. “It just makes you stop and listen. Charity has such a presence, and when she decides to step out front like that, it really grabs your attention.”

Thielen feels a similar affection toward it. “It’s definitely a song that felt cathartic to compose – to me, in that moment of creation, it felt brave to even utter the phrase of feeling ‘finally free,’ which in many ways the act of utterance was personally healing,” she shares. “The meditative mono and minimalist production and melody was instinctive and sonically incredibly unique to the rest of Aperture, and I couldn’t imagine the song approached any other way.”

Red rain on the floor
Falling down, flooding these halls
Ink cracks through these holes
Crumbling down all over these walls
It’s really just you and me

Red paint on this floor
Look up high, feeling small
Faint heart haunting me
Through these halls and under these eaves
It’s really just you and me
Finally free

Don’t run away
I couldn’t take the pain
Thundering down on me

– “Finally Free,” The Head and the Heart

Russell and Gervais also make mention of “West Coast,” an achingly vulnerable and beautifully raw song written by Gervais together with the band’s keyboardist Kenny Hensley, who also sings lead vocals for the first time. “He has a great voice, but it’s not usually his role. Just the fact that he felt comfortable enough to step into that space says a lot,” Russell smiles. “I’m so proud of him. And beyond all that, it’s just one of my favorite songs, period.”

The song’s lyrics continuously trail off, with Hensley singing “la-da-da” at the ends of his sentences – a reminder of all we have left to express when words fail us. It’s profound in its poetic simplicity, and another reminder of our shared humanity “We’ve all felt that la-da-da one hundred percent,” Gervais says, with Russell calling it “the most profound phrase on the record.”

We’re both living on the west coast
But you’re dreaming of the east coast
Does it really even matter?
La da da
I was living in a junkyard
Could’ve been a graveyard
If I only had a brave heart
La da da

Been going on the crash course
Looking out for the road signs
Still waiting at the red light
La da da
It’s getting harder to admit it
I know we can’t quit yet
Central Park and the boat ride
Ferris wheel in the moonlight

– “West Coast,” The Head and the Heart

Aperture is a deeply human album – not just in what it says, but in how it was made: With intention, patience, presence, and trust.

It’s The Head and the Heart’s intentional – and unintentional – reconnection with their roots, embracing their love for each another and for songcraft. “We showed ourselves that the reason it worked in the beginning is the same reason it still works now – if we trust it,” Russell says. “That’s what I hope people feel from it. That sense of grounding, and also of growth.”

There’s a fluidity to Aperture that reflects both the band’s personal growth and their artistic evolution: It’s cohesive without being confined, wide-reaching without feeling scattered. The album’s sequencing invites listeners on an emotional arc – not a strict narrative, but a movement through grief and joy, reckoning and renewal, presence and possibility. Songs bleed into each other like moments in real life, shaped less by genre boundaries than by gut, instinct, and collective trust. In doing so, The Head and the Heart manage to sound both familiar and revitalized – a band not reinventing themselves, but re-rooting themselves in what matters most.

“For me, Aperture represents the choice we all must make between resigning ourselves to darkness, or letting the light in and recognizing our own agency to do so,” Gervais shares. “It feels relevant to the times, in that we’re literally choosing between authoritarianism vs. democracy. Ignorance vs. enlightenment on a macro scale, and complacency/cynicism vs. hope, empathy and perseverance on the micro scale. To me, it sums up a lot of what each of these songs is grappling with in some form and what we’ve collectively gone through as a band. It’s about choosing hope again and again, no matter how many times it may feel that you have lost it.”

True to their name once again, The Head and the Heart have used both their heads and their hearts to create one of this year’s best albums –

– an electrifying, exhilarating folk rock journey into our shared humanity that meets the present moment with passion, tenacity, vulnerability, and above all else, hope.

Catch up with the band in our intimate interview below, and listen to Aperture wherever you stream music.

“When you create this way – when you let things unfold instead of forcing them – there’s no bottom,” Matty Gervais reflects. “You can keep exploring and discovering. That lesson took us a long time to relearn as a band, but now that we have, it’s really hopeful. This album is the start of something… it’s a new beginning.”

And that sentiment has never rung truer for The Head and the Heart.

Zoom in on the full picture of Aperture, out now, and catch the band live on tour this summer – dates and more info at theheadandtheheart.com!

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:: stream/purchase Aperture here ::

:: connect with The Head and the Heart here ::

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A CONVERSATION WITH THE HEAD AND THE HEART

Jonathan Russell: I think the biggest thing was the reaction to how we made Every Shade of Blue, and how that process rippled out once we started touring it. That album came together in such a fragmented way, and I think it left us really wanting the opposite. We wanted to do what we originally set out to do with Aperture, which was get back in a room together and write as a band – like we used to in the early days.

So we made these intentional trips to Seattle and Richmond. Another thing we learned from the past was to keep the writing trips short, like five to seven days. After that you start to burn out. We also had fewer deadlines and fewer people involved. We were out of our record deal with Warner, and suddenly we had the freedom to design this however we wanted. It’s funny how you forget you have that power – that there really are no rules. It’s just about what you give yourself permission to do.

We circled back to that awareness. We started writing in Richmond in small groups, and it eventually became full-band sessions. That unfolded over a year and a half. We’d go on tour, take a break, then meet up again. We didn’t force anything. We gave the music time to marinate. A lot of songs were written musically first, and then we’d take those demos home, sit with them, and write lyrics slowly. It gave us the space to really imagine the world we wanted to create.

Matty Gervais: Yeah, a big part of it was learning from our past mistakes. When you’re on the hamster wheel of being in a band and trying to sustain a career, you don’t always have time to self-assess. You end up making the same decisions, repeating the same patterns. This was the first time we had a breath of fresh air.

There was a point where we had no label, no management, no timeline. And strangely, that felt like being a brand-new band again. All the things you’re supposed to go searching for when you start out – we suddenly didn’t have them. And that freed up this creative space. We weren’t caught up in the outcome. It was just about what the six of us were making together in that moment.

Gervais: Like Jon mentioned, the ripple effect of touring that record played a big part. I rarely go back and listen to our albums after we’ve made them. My experience is shaped by performing those songs and seeing how audiences engage with them.

So when you’ve been on the road playing the same material for two years, you start to think, okay, we’ve done that. There are things about that production that were really fun, but there were also certain performance elements that were tied to those production choices. We were cognizant of trying to move back to something that sounded like six people in a room.

The fun part now is reassessing the older songs and seeing which ones live in the same emotional and creative space as the Aperture material. You start to recognize patterns – even ones you didn’t realize were there. That’s when you start to understand the story you’re telling, whether you knew it or not. Each tour reshapes our relationship with the music.

Russell: Yeah. I was listening back to a lot of Every Shade of Blue while we were rehearsing for this tour. Songs like “Love We Make,” which we hadn’t played much before, and then “Starstruck,” “Love Me Still.” I was like, wow, these are actually some of my favorite songs.

But I also feel like that album might have been more of a Jon record than a band record. And that’s not always the best thing. If I’m the one who loves it the most, that doesn’t really serve the whole band.

Russell: Yeah. It doesn’t do anybody any good if the final product only feels fulfilling to one person. That’s kind of the opposite of what this band is about.

Gervais: That line is rooted in the experience of being in this band. So much of your life becomes intertwined with these people. And over time, you hit roadblocks. We’ve had to overcome a lot just to keep doing what we do and to keep sharing music with people. That has value. You see it every time you step onstage.

When we were making this record, we were each going through massive life changes. The full spectrum – birth, death, and everything in between. It felt like we were all going through some kind of crucible, both individually and collectively. That poured into the music.

The way we created Aperture allowed for that. There weren’t expectations. We gave ourselves room to follow the moment. Even a song like “Beg, Steal, Borrow,” which sounds upbeat, came from a meditative place. It was about being present and tuning into what others were doing, rather than pushing something. The lyrics weren’t prewritten – they were revealed through the music.

I remember hearing this Neil Young interview where he talked about walking in nature, whistling melodies into a recorder, and then letting the lyrics come later. That stuck with me. I approached my contributions to this record the same way. I wasn’t pressuring myself to be a songwriter – I just let it come in drips and assembled the pieces. That might sound esoteric, but it’s what happened.

Russell: That’s me.

Russell: That one came out of a really interesting moment. We were in Richmond, and we had booked a writing trip – but just because you’ve shown up doesn’t mean you’re in the right headspace to write. We were all in the studio, kind of beating our heads against the wall. Nothing genuine was coming out. So we made the decision to stop forcing it and took a break. Tyler lives right across the gravel road from the studio, and he has a pool. So we literally took a pool break.

We went over, got some sun, relaxed, laughed a little. That pressure of “we’re here, we should be creating” started to lift. And when we came back to the studio, I don’t know why, but that song just came out. It wasn’t prewritten. I hadn’t been working on it. But I had this little guitar riff, and then the melody came, and everything followed from there.

For me, the vocal tone and guitar tone almost became one instrument. You can’t quite tell which one is leading. It’s this layered effect – like playing organ and guitar at the same time. That’s what I love about singing in that falsetto; it melts into the texture.

Lyrically, it felt like a mantra. Just subtly changing phrases, repeating this core feeling. I kept imagining this image of a little boy sitting alone in a huge field, carrying a large pain. Waiting for someone – a father figure – to come put a hand on his shoulder and say, “I’ve got you.” But that never happens. And so the world stays big and scary. That feeling has lived in me forever. The father-son relationship is still, and probably always will be, a work in progress. That type of pain is generally always in my body.

Russell: Yeah. I’m 40 and I still feel that fear. It’s wild. But I didn’t want to name the song something heavy-handed. We kept it as “Pool Break” on purpose. That was the inside joke – but also, in a way, a reminder not to make the emotion too precious. Yes, that kind of pain is real, but it doesn’t make me special. Everyone feels that kind of thing at some point. Leaving the title as-is helped deflate some of the self-importance around it. Like, here’s the truth, but also, we’re just little blips in the universe.

Gervais: I love that. And it reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about. For a while, writing songs felt like banging my head against the wall. And what helped me break through for this record was letting go. Just like Jon said, not being attached to the outcome. Once I stopped trying so hard, the stuff that needed to come up finally came through. You make space, and the poignant stuff rises to the surface.

Russell: There’s definitely a version of songwriting that feels like, “Okay, I’m on deadline, I need to write something, let’s just get it done.” And then there’s another version where you stop pushing and something essential emerges. That was the shift. Before the pool break, we were all thinking, “We showed up, so we should be writing something.” But that mindset wasn’t producing anything real. Once we relaxed into it – even accepted that we might not write anything that day – that’s when something beautiful happened.

Russell: That one came more from the group. It started with a different instrumental – I had those opening lines and melody, but it was over music that didn’t make the final cut. Later on, Kenny came in with this piano part that felt really heroic. Like classic Springsteen.

Gervais: Yeah, and we played it with this kind of early 2000s emo-pop punk edge. But instead of electric guitars, I was playing acoustic in this weird tuning. Jon had left one of the guitars in the studio tuned a certain way, and I just picked it up and was like, what the hell is this? That tuning ended up on a bunch of songs: “After the Setting Sun,” “Finally Free,” “Aperture.”

It’s D-A-D-A-A-F#, which is hilarious because Jon had just become a da-da, I’m a da-da twice over – we joked that everyone in the band was in dad mode. So it’s literally DA-DA-A-F#, the most appropriate tuning ever.

Russell: It gave the song this beautiful melancholic vibe, which paired really well with that upbeat energy. It’s like sadness and joy braided together.

Gervais: And I just remember Jon in the studio, late at night, doing what he does best – throwing ideas at the wall. Everyone was in the control room, he was in the booth, just riffing. It was playful and messy, and the song revealed itself that way. That same ethos you mentioned earlier – not taking it too seriously – that’s what shaped “Jubilee.” It came from joy.

Russell: That one was special. It kind of just erupted. Our bass player had recorded this strumming pattern at home – I think he was literally watching Walker, Texas Ranger at the time. It was something super simple, but it was a pattern I never would have played. We looped it and just started building off of it. Tyler was on drums, I was playing a drum machine. Everyone was just vibing, adding parts.

We ended up with this long instrumental demo, just looping for a few minutes. And I went into the vocal booth and did one single take – that’s what you hear on the record. It just came out of me. I wasn’t consciously writing it. I had this one phrase I liked, “Take me on a boat ride,” and I knew I wanted to work it in, so I dropped it into the middle of a verse. But everything else just flowed.

I usually struggle with linear storytelling in my lyrics. I get too abstract. But somehow this song had a beginning, middle, and end. And I was kind of shocked by that. All I knew was that I loved it. But I was scared to admit how much I loved it because I thought people would ask me to fix it or polish it. Re-sing it. That would’ve devastated me, because the emotion in that performance – it was completely raw. Unrepeatable.

Russell: Yeah. I didn’t even know if I could sing like that again. It was like I exorcised something. Luckily, we found out I can still sing it – we do it live now. But still, it was lightning in a bottle. That song could never have come from “working” on a song. It had to come from a wrecking ball inside me.

Gervais: I actually wasn’t there. Charity and I were home having our second child. So I first experienced “Cop Car” as a demo, just like you. I had the same reaction. It felt alive. Like something totally new. Same with “Pool Break.” They were exciting and different, and they made me want to dive back in. I remember hearing them and thinking, “Okay, this is the vibe. This is the direction.” Those songs were a North Star for the rest of the sessions.

Russell: I agree with all of that. Totally.

Gervais: You nailed it. From the second Kenny started playing that piano line – it was a little dissonant at first, then resolved into something super warm and major – we all just jumped in. Chris was playing a sitar bass. We were all smiling, playing live, feeding off each other. It was joyful.

The structure came together quickly, and so did the lyrics. I remember that line, “I thought I had my head on straight,” just popped out. And then, “It’s so damn good to see you / it’s strange the way the time flies” – that one kept coming back, and it grounded everything. That was the emotional core. I took the instrumental home and started reflecting on what it made me feel.

It took me right back to the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. Being on the fire escape after a show, smoking a cigarette, watching the crowd file out. You don’t realize it at the time, but you’re young and in this special moment. And then ten, fifteen years later, you look back and think, “Wow, those were good times.”

Whenever I start feeling nostalgic like that, it snowballs. The song became this story of reconnecting with someone after all that time, and realizing just how much has changed – but also how much is still shared.

Russell: It’s probably my favorite song to play live right now. Even if I’m having a tough night onstage – which happens more than I’d like to admit – that song cracks a smile out of me. It’s a time machine. I can remember exactly what shoes I was wearing in 2009. That one hits deep in the best way.

Gervais: Good question. I’m not sure when it was decided exactly, but it just felt right. Tracklisting is always a process, but this one – it just made sense. That song feels like a welcome. It says: This is where we are now.

And right off the bat, it’s processing grief. It’s about losing someone you loved deeply, and suddenly they’re just… gone. You’re left trying to make sense of that. But at the same time, you’re giving yourself permission to imagine they’re not completely gone. What comes after the setting sun? Maybe something. It’s not nothing. That thought can be comforting.

Russell: And what I love about that song is that, even though Matty just explained exactly what it means to him, it still leaves room for interpretation. That’s good songwriting. The first line of the whole record is “When you least expect it,” which I love. It feels like someone showing up at a party ten years later, tapping you on the shoulder, like, “Hey, I’m here.”

When I hear that song, I don’t think about grief the way Matty described it. But I still feel something. I enter into it from a different angle. And that’s what makes it such a perfect opening track – it’s gentle, but also surprising. It sets up this whole album as something that wasn’t expected. I didn’t see this record coming. I don’t think our fans did either.

Gervais: That song has this cinematic finality to it. It feels like the end of a movie. It’s trying to make sense of the chaos of life – moving too fast to see the scenery, always falling from a great height. There’s that line, “I don’t remember asking for any of this.” I think about that a lot. We don’t choose to be here. And life is overwhelming. But we are here. So what do we do with it?

That song is about confronting that question. It’s saying, “This is what I’ve got, and this is what I can do with it now.” That’s where the agency is. And pairing that with the sun coming out at the end – that’s hope. There’s no pretending everything’s okay. But there’s still beauty. And light.

Aperture as a word just captures all of that. It’s about letting light in, but also about clarity. Seeing what’s really there, even if it’s hard to look at. You can’t control what’s in the frame. But you can choose to look at it.

Russell: That duality is all over the record. That tension between light and dark, grief and beauty. The word Aperture holds it all. That’s why it made sense to name the album after it.

Russell: “Finally Free,” for sure. That song takes the air out of the room. It just makes you stop and listen. Charity has such a presence, and when she decides to step out front like that, it really grabs your attention.

There’s a whole backstory behind how it came together. She felt confident and comfortable enough in that moment to direct all of us in the room to get what she needed. And that was huge. You could feel the shift in energy. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she communicated it gently, clearly. It was just one of those rare moments when everything aligns.

Gervais: The way she did it was so graceful. Lighthearted, but still grounded in something deep. And that’s what I love about “Finally Free.” Some of my favorite songs, I have no idea what they’re about – but you feel what they’re about. You get it on an intrinsic level.

With Charity’s voice especially, she creates this space that feels sacred. It’s open, loving, nurturing – filled with empathy and compassion – but it also carries grief and depth. That’s what she does on “Rivers and Roads” every night. And “Finally Free” is like a sound bath in that same spirit. It’s her at her most expressive.

Charity Rose Thielen: The creation of “Finally Free” was honestly a very freeing and flow-state sort of a process where I fell into a producer’s role acting on impulse very quickly. The melodic cadence came to mind and mouth very rapidly too, as if the song was writing itself amongst us in real time. It’s definitely a song that felt cathartic to compose – to me, in that moment of creation, it felt brave to even utter the phrase of feeling ‘finally free’, which in many ways the act of utterance was personally healing. The meditative mono and minimalist production and melody was instinctive and sonically incredibly unique to the rest of ‘Aperture’ and I couldn’t imagine the song approached any other way.

Russell: Another one that means a lot to me is “West Coast,” which Matty and Kenny wrote together. Kenny sings the verses, and that’s not something he’s ever really done in the band before. He has a great voice, but it’s not usually his role.

Just the fact that he felt comfortable enough to step into that space says a lot. He’s been through a lot the last few years. And to go from not singing at all to singing lead on a Head and the Heart track – that takes guts. I’m so proud of him. And beyond all that, it’s just one of my favorite songs, period.

I grew up in Florida, riding around in my dad’s truck, listening to the Hell Freezes Over CD by the Eagles. I know The Big Lebowski made people think the Eagles weren’t cool, but I don’t care – those are some of the best songwriters and singers out there. “West Coast” puts me right back in that truck. It’s got that feel. There’s a real Eagles vibe to it, in the best way.

I’m so proud of Kenny for that one, and proud of all of us for making an environment that allows people to feel that confident, and be that vulnerable. I think it says a lot about where we’re at as people, right now, which feels good.

Gervais: That one’s really special. I remember sitting around a campfire with Kenny. It was still daylight, fire going, and we were trading lines, shaping the song. For him, lyric writing is new. So it was this moment of pure collaboration. Vulnerable, raw. And that definitely comes through in the song.

Russell: Well noted and well heard. He grappled with that line. I feel like deep down he knew he liked it, but was thinking, ‘surely I can’t get away with saying la-da-da.’ And I was just like, ‘dude, it feels perfect.’ I agree entirely with what you just said, Mitch.

Matty Gervais: All the lines that lead up to it are clearly a relationship that’s grappling with a lot of stuff. And so, the la-da-da is like… damn, we’ve all felt that la-da-da one hundred percent.

Jonathan Russell: The most profound phrase on the record, “la-da-da.”

Russell: For me, it gave me confidence. We showed ourselves that the reason it worked in the beginning is the same reason it still works now – if we trust it. That’s what I hope people feel from it. That sense of grounding, and also of growth.

Gervais: Yeah. It feels like a well we can keep drawing from. When you create this way – when you let things unfold instead of forcing them – there’s no bottom. You can keep exploring and discovering. That lesson took us a long time to relearn as a band. But now that we have, it’s really hopeful. I think this album is the start of something, not the end.

Russell: For me, it’s Wildflowers. Like what that album did for Tom Petty. It made people realize there was still more to say. That there were new sides of him to discover. Not that we’re Tom Petty – but in our little world, it feels like that. A moment of revelation.

Gervais: Yeah. We talk about that a lot. Mid-career records can go a few ways. You can taper off, or you can reset. Reconnect. Reinvigorate. That’s what this feels like. Charity even joked about calling it The Head and the Heart 2, like it’s the sequel or reboot. Because it does feel like LP1 all over again. Like a fresh start.

Gervais: Futurebirds and Anna Graves, for sure. They’re touring with us right now and both are amazing. Futurebirds have been around as long as we have. Their catalog is so good – this rootsy, classic rock–indie hybrid. Anna’s incredible too. Beautiful voice, great songwriter.

Aldous Harding is someone I love. It’s been a minute since her last record, but she’s phenomenal. And Dean Johnson – he’s a Seattle guy, and honestly a musical genius. I saw him perform solo at a little bar in Ballard. Just me and a couple others. It was jaw-dropping. His falsetto is unreal. And he’s the kindest guy. He recently covered one of my songs and played it for me backstage. That was one of the most special moments of my career.

Russell: I’ll throw in Landon Elliott. His new record Aftermath is amazing. He’s someone who’s been through a major personal transformation – identity, relationships, the whole thing. And he did it all publicly, with so much honesty and bravery. The music reflects that. It’s a powerful listen.

Also, this might be random, but I’ve been diving into George Michael lately. Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1. I’d never really lived with his music before, but now I feel like I’m moving in. It’s incredible.

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:: stream/purchase Aperture here ::

:: connect with The Head and the Heart here ::

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“Beg, Steal, Borrow” – The Head and the Heart

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Aperture

an album by The Head and the Heart