Now, I love The Head and the Heart. Sure, they are campfire songs/granola/road trip vibes manifested into a band, but I’m here for it. Obviously, I am a very seasoned music writer, one with a deep understanding of how bands can evolve over time. So. when I first saw the tracklist, I thought, “Hell yea, it’s a concept album!” Here’s how I thought it would go:
After the Setting Sun: OK, it’s nighttime. Maybe it’s like The Purge.
Time with my Sins: Ooo, is that guilt I’m picking up?
Arrow: MAYBE IT WAS A HUNTING “ACCIDENT.”
Beg Steal Borrow: THE CRIME SPREE CONTINUES.
Cop Car: BUSTED. BAD BOYS! BAD BOYS! WHATCHU GONNA DOOOOO?
Blue Embers: HE SET A FIRE TO ESCAPE? Nice.
Fire Escape: Ahhh. He totally had a PLAN.
Pool Break: Enjoying life in case he gets caught again. I would, too.
Jubilee: Hitting up the function. Hell yeah. Hope they got grilled corn.
West Coast: Fugitives ALWAYS head to California, don’t they? MAYBE HE’S HEADING TO MEXICO!
Finally Free: He was totally heading to Mexico. ¡BIENVENIDOS!
Aperture: RUH ROH. BUSTED BY THE AI POLICE STATE! Was the whole album a warning of a future we have yet to write?
Upon listening to the album, I can tell you that I, in fact, got none of this right and am instead a total ding-dong.
Instead of a crunchy Americana crime spree set to handclaps and harmonies, Aperture is something both far more grounded and far more existential. The Head and the Heart’s sixth studio album is less “plot twist” and more “life twist.” The band, fresh off their major-label era, holed up in Seattle and Richmond and decided to feel again. What came out is a self-produced collection of songs that crack open the murky, overwhelming blur of adulthood and shine a soft but steady light through it.
It’s emotional CPR.
The band claims Aperture is about finding agency in darkness — choosing hope over complacency, perspective over panic. And yeah, that’s a hell of a tagline in an era where most of us are either emotionally fried, responding to rage-bait, or doom-scrolling into oblivion. But somehow, The Head and the Heart manage to turn that into foot-stomping, soul-healing catharsis. It’s a tightrope walk between folk-rock comfort food and an almost punk urgency. And it… works?
“Blue Embers,” for instance, (which I had pegged as the arson scene in my imagined outlaw narrative) is actually a beautiful, tender and raw conversation about the overwhelming… everything. It captures that feeling of hoping against a sea of hopelessness. With a chorus shining through the darkness, “but I believe in you, honey, if you believe in me, and I know it’s hard to do because I don’t believe in anything.” UGH. I didn’t sign up to have feelings, but here we are.
Meanwhile, “Cop Car,” which I thought was gonna be a straight-up Baby Driver scene soundtrack, is instead a full-band freak-out with drummer Tyler Williams on lead vocals — a first for the group. The result is less “fuck the police” and more “fuck this panic attack.”
And it’s all wrapped up in the band’s best production since their debut: which they did themselves, basically locking themselves away.
That DIY spirit, which fueled their early years, gives Aperture a pulse that some of their major-label releases lost along the way. There’s tension here. There’s a playfulness found in the interplay between main and backing vocals throughout the album. But there’s anxiety, and hopelessness, and hope.
Aperture doesn’t give answers. It gives permission. To breathe, to come undone, to just be, and then, as Matt Gervais puts it, to “let the light in.”
And while I was dead wrong about the whole fugitive-on-the-run story arc, I still stand by this: it’s pretty great in the “screaming into the void while wearing a beanie and clutching a strong cup of coffee with both hands” kinda way.