The Head and The Heart

As The Head and the Heart toured behind their 2022 album, Every Shade of Blue, Jonathan Russell realized something needed to change inside the band he had cofounded a dozen years earlier: the entire songwriting process. At the start of the last decade, with their self-titled debut, they’d instantly bloomed at the fertile intersection of indie rock and folk-rock like some rare flower.

Their massive harmonies and pulsing arrangements suggested a cadre of old friends, working together to share some new emotional burden—a band, really. But the tandem of success and encroaching adulthood had forced sometimes-unspoken changes over the years, with Russell often taking on lead songwriting duties, even bringing in outside collaborators to bolster his ideas. That early band energy faded a bit, The Head and the Heart becoming more a team of collaborators adding or even playing parts for songs that were almost ready to record. On stage, they could all feel it: a slight disconnect from the songs, a slight disconnect from one another. The Head and the Heart needed a restart.

Aperture—The Head and the Heart’s sixth album and their first since signing to Verve Forecast—is the affirming result of that realization. More than any other record ever by The Head and the Heart, Aperture feels like the work of a real band, made giddy by the process of once again sharing some emotional load. With every song fortified by the sense of beginning again, Aperture is The Head and the Heart’s most vital and poignant album. It is the best work they’ve ever done.