{"id":2452174,"date":"2019-12-12T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=317565"},"modified":"2019-12-12T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T23:00:00","slug":"the-head-and-the-heart-reborn-and-back-at-belly-up-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/the-head-and-the-heart-reborn-and-back-at-belly-up-aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Head and the Heart reborn and back at Belly Up Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The Head and the Heart will headline Belly Up Aspen on Monday.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Members of the folk band The Head and the Heart<\/a> went into the California desert last year to figure out who they were.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s trajectory to that point had been the stuff of throwback rock \u2019n\u2019 roll lore \u2014 scrappy Seattle beginnings, a rootsy and auspicious debut record, a sophomore album that crossed over into the pop mainstream, topped the charts and saw the band playing a sold-out Red Rocks and the main stage at Coachella. After a few years of that, naturally, came something like an identity crisis.<\/p>\n

So they followed in the footsteps of rock stars past and retreated to Joshua Tree for three weeks of playing music together and recording.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had gotten to a place in our career where we knew who each other was based on who we were when we started the band,\u201d drummer Tyler Williams said this week in a phone interview. \u201cWe realized, with 10 years gone by, that people are different. We wanted to re-establish who each person is. We wanted to explore and explode our relationships in the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result of that introspective process is \u201cLiving Mirage,\u201d a surprising and triumphant fourth album from the band released in May. They played two nights at Belly Up Aspen in March, on what Williams called a \u201cmountain-hopping\u201d tour trying out the new songs before the release. They are back at Belly Up on Monday night, following a Saturday night show at Vail Snow Says. (In between the spring and winter Colorado runs this year, the band played two summer nights at Red Rocks.)<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving Mirage\u201d is the first Head and the Heart album since guitarist and vocalist Josiah Johnson left the band (amicably, they\u2019ve said). Matt Gervais, husband of the singer and violinist Charity Rose Thielen, took his place and former keyboardist Kenny Hensley came back into the fold. They\u2019ve written the new songs cooperatively, rather than with frontman Jonathan Russell taking the lead.<\/p>\n

The Joshua Tree sessions were propelled by free-form jamming and working out musical ideas together without set song structures \u2014 a new process for the band.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may not be able to speak about it out loud, but we can have a conversation musically,\u201d Williams explained. \u201cWe found where everyone\u2019s thinking was in Joshua Tree through the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title track of the new record was the first song birthed out of those improvisatory sessions. It\u2019s been trimmed in half from an original 10 minutes into a slow-building anthem, which steadily grows from a quietly dreamy and harmonica-tinged opening into a fist-pumping rocker. Unsurprisingly, Williams said, the track has become one of the high points of recent live sets.<\/p>\n

And while the improvisatory writing and the soul-searching deep-dive in the desert might seem to be a recipe for rock \u2019n\u2019 roll self-indulgence and navel-gazing, to the contrary, this record is filled with tight, catchy and irresistible pop songs like the lead single \u201cMissed Connection\u201d and the ballad \u201cHoneybee,\u201d which have been the big streaming hits so far from \u201cLiving Mirage.\u201d The Head and the Heart didn\u2019t set out to write loveable pop songs, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe magic of this band is that we align ourselves while we\u2019re doing it, but we don\u2019t ever sit down and say, \u2018OK, we\u2019re going to write a song that sounds like this!\u2019\u201d Williams said. \u201cIt\u2019s weird and mystical for us, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new songs introduce a more grand, more fun version of the folk rock that The Head and the Heart was making a decade ago. The band has grown since the bare-bones folk of their self-titled 2011 debut and defining early songs like \u201cLost in My Mind\u201d and \u201cRivers and Roads,\u201d and since the chart-topping and more radio-friendly 2013 album \u201cLet\u2019s Be Still.\u201d<\/p>\n

But they could just as easily turn around and make a more somber and no-frills album next time out (a live acoustic version of \u201cHoneybee,\u201d released online last week, proves they can still mesmerize with intimate folk songs). Williams said he and his bandmates love creatively adventurous artists like Bruce Springsteen and sonic U-turns like Springsteen\u2019s early-1980s jump from the stark \u201cNebraska\u201d to the anthemic \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery new album we like to come in from a different place and not rehash the past,\u201d Williams said, \u201cto come in with new ideas that feel genuine and new.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Head and the Heart will headline Belly Up Aspen on Monday.Courtesy photo Members of the folk band The Head and the Heart went into the California desert last year to figure out who they were. The band\u2019s trajectory to that point had been the stuff of throwback rock \u2019n\u2019 roll lore \u2014 scrappy Seattle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 02:34:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}