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The Head and the Heart have confirmed a May 9 release date for their sixth studio album, Aperture, which also marks their debut for Verve Forecast. New single “After the Setting Sun” is out today and can be streamed here. The new track follows the release of their own record setting #1 AAA single “Arrow” and a new, separate version of the track featuring Mt. Joy that supports victims of the recent LA fires. Aperture brings the band back to a DIY approach as it’s the first record self-produced by the band since their self-titled debut album in 2011.The band has also announced their accompanying 2025 “Aperture” tour. Featuring special guests Wild Rivers and Marfa, the tour includes a stop in Cincinnati, OH for a performance at The ICON Festival Stage at Smale Park on Sunday, July 20.
During more than 15 years together, The Head and The Heart have journeyed their way through a lot of different terrain – a critically and commercially revered debut album and follow up on stalwart indie Sub Pop, followed by three albums with big hits on major label Warner Records.
But after touring in support of 2022’s Every Shade of Blue tour, they started asking questions. Where have we been and what’s next? Taking their future into their own hands, the band decamped to Richmond, Va., and hit the reset button with a grip of ideas in tow. As they did in their early years, band members handled production duties themselves. Staying true to their own creative vision was paramount, and through a year of sessions in their twin home bases of Seattle and Richmond, The Head and The Heart found their way forward by believing in their power as one.
“I believe we’ve made a very great record together and obviously the title is an important aspect of the final product,” says group member Matty Gervais. “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. 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.”
As for the title song, Gervais says it 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.”
At early sessions for Aperture, the group instantly tapped into a renewed enthusiasm, with a tide of ideas rippling out in a matter of days. There was a rawness and unfettered energy to these songs. A band that had built a massive audience with meticulous arrangements and studio perfection suddenly found a vim that bordered on punk. Pianist Kenny Hensley sang and contributed lyrics for the first time, and drummer Tyler Williams even sang lead for the first time, boosting an explosive tune from vocalist/guitarist Jonathan Russell called “Cop Car.”
Russell previously said the decision for the band to return to self-producing was “a 180 in terms of where we were headed. We really wanted to make our next music our own way, and it was a lot of fun to have all of us in a room together again. When we’d have downtime over the past two years, we’d all fly into either Seattle or Richmond and work in a specific studio in each place. We worked with engineers from our past. All these things went into being able to reimagine how we wanted to approach making music.”
Aperture is the follow-up to 2022’s Every Shade of Blue, which spawned hits from its title song and “Virginia (Wind in the Night).”
Fans can pre-save/preorder the new album Aperture and explore exclusive products, including signed copies HERE.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The ICON Festival Stage at Smale Park, Cincinnati, United States
Tickets
