The Head And The Heart: Returning Home To Build A New Legacy
Courtesy of soundthread.net
The Head And The Heart’s new album, Every Shade Of Blue, will be released April 29th. In the past five years, the band has dealt with the departure of founding member Josiah Johnson, a near breakup that prompted the group to seek therapy, and the pandemic lockdown of 2020. With the decided return to the group’s home city of Seattle, Washington, and the studio where their first two albums were recorded, The Head And The Heart’s fifth studio album feels like a reckoning of the past and a gateway to bigger and better things. I caught up with band member Charity Rose Thielen via zoom to discuss the group’s new album, their place in the musical legacy of the Pacific Northwest, and their upcoming tour.
AM: For this album, you decided to record in Seattle at the same studio your first two albums were recorded; what prompted that decision?
Charity: We were trying to navigate the pandemic, and not everyone was comfortable with getting together, but we wanted to take advantage of the gift of time. Initially, we were meeting remotely and exchanging songs and tracks back and forth until we could meet in person at Studio Litho, where we recorded our first album. It was cool because we got to bring in someone new, producer Jesse Shatkin. He is from the pop world and had only worked with one other full band. Bringing him up from L.A. into Seattle felt like this merge of old and new, like we brought in our past, but we are also exploring the future for The Head And The Heart. It felt like an authentic representation of where the band is. There are so many different personalities floating around in this band; it felt cool to be able to bring them all together. We were also able to work with our original engineer, Shawn Simmons; it was really cool to see him and Jesse working together.
AM: Is there something in Seattle the band can not get anywhere else?
Charity: Oh, one hundred percent, yes. We formed here. We came up in Seattle. The band would not be who it is without this place and all the support we have and continue to get here. It is a unique place. People started moving away to go back to their original homes where their roots and families are, but Seattle is still very much the band's roots. We now have this newfound, fresh perspective when we come back here. Our first tours were always in the greater northwest region, so playing in those places always feels like an extension of playing hometown shows.
AM: What place do you think the band holds within the larger musical legacy of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest?
Charity: It is hard to place yourself within a legacy. What preceded us was so much. More relative to what was happening around us, you have The Fleet Foxes; Macklemore was coming up at the same time we were. That was cool to have these very different genres coming out of Seattle and making a splash nationally. We were doing pop songwriting in a kind of folk guise, which meant we were playing unplugged a lot, and we could really bring and play our instruments anywhere. That ended up informing a lot of our music. Through the years, we have been able to explore and push forward a lot more. I think that is how we have been able to evolve, but how that informs how we fit into the legacy, that is a tough question to answer.
AM: It is often said that music out of the Pacific Northwest, whether grunge, hip-hop, or other genres, tends to be filtered through a kind of pop sensibility. Do you think that is an accurate description? What do you think it is about this area that informs that kind of music-making?
Charity: In the Pacific Northwest, people tend to be indoors a lot because of the weather. I think that kind of limitation creates focus but also allows for some healthy escapism as well. As far as the different genres having pop sensibility, to make it onto a national stage, given the landscape of mainstream music, you have to know what it takes to create those kinds of songs.
Photo by Jacqueline Justice, courtesy of variancemagazine.com
AM: The band has been very open about its multiple trials and tribulations, including lineup changes and seeking therapy together. How did going through those experiences inform the writing and creation of this new album?
Charity: For me, creativity and creative productivity are an extension of how healthy or unhealthy a relationship is. It is a misnomer that the more messed up a band’s dynamic is, the better the art will be. There will always be miscommunications and issues within a group of people. Whatever we create represents where we are relationally at that time. Our best work is still yet to come and I think that is a healthy place for us to be. Multiple factors go into the creative output that produces an album and you can not ignore the relationships when you create that piece of art.
AM: Your bandmate, Jonathan Russell, has described the band’s newest single, “Tiebreaker,” as a “carnival ride through a wide variety of characters and relationships,” is that a good description for the whole album?
Charity: Yeah, I think so.
AM: You will be going on tour again soon; what music will be on the road trip playlist?
Charity: The new Aldous Harding just came out, a great album called Warm Chris. At the beginning of the pandemic, Bruce Springsteen’s Letter To You came out, which has been such a grounding space for me over the past few years. Those will be on there, but I also have to ask the other five guys; we always have to make the playlist together so everyone can have their choices on it.
AM: Last question for you, what is your favorite midnight stop at the gas station food?
Charity: Oh gosh, it feels like ions ago since that has happened. Those Chex Mix muddy buddies, I love those.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
