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. Sure, they’d had Platinum singles, including “Honeybee” and “All We Ever Knew,” but the tandem of success and encroaching adulthood had forced sometimes-unspoken changes over the years. Russell, for instance, often took on lead songwriting duties, even bringing in outside collaborators to bolster his ideas. Their early band energy faded a bit, a slight disconnect forming between the songs and the members, even between one another.

Aperture—The Head and the Heart’s sixth album and their first since signing to Verve Forecast—is the affirming sound of their restart. After leading so much of the songwriting during the last decade, Russell ceded that role to everyone, shooing away siloed work for a highly collaborative approach where everyone hatched tunes together in a room or passed ideas between coasts. 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.

Really, all of Aperture sounds like the work of a band reaching unimagined levels of camaraderie and mutual risk as one, at once. A spirited homage to honesty and love, “Jubilee” is like the sun suddenly bursting from the clouds. It bounces like a piece of pop-punk and arcs like a Springsteen classic. During “Beg Steal Borrow,” The Head and The Heart’s trademark harmonies conjure communal aspirations. And there may be no better summary of this fellow feeling than the mighty “Arrow,” a shout-along song about sometimes needing the space to roam and fail on your own and sometimes needing to be guided and helped by those around you. The Head and The Heart has finally found a way for its six members to find their own ideas and then build them, together, into something magnificent.

Wilderado

When Wilderado began writing songs for their second album, Talker, the idea of chasing after their debut record’s success — including pair of Top 10 hits on alternative radio — couldn’t have been further from their minds.

“We were coming off 265 days on the road, and we all felt a little broken,” says frontman Maxim Rainer. “We had to ask ourselves if we still wanted to do this, and we decided that the only way to rejuvenate the band was by making new music that we love. That was our only rule.”

The result is Talker, a dynamic record that finds Wilderado reframing their purpose and broadening their perspective. Recorded with producers Chad Copeland (Sufjan Stevens, SYML) and James McAllister (Gracie Abrams, The National) in Norman, Oklahoma, it’s the sound of three musicians shrugging off the allure of success and, instead, embracing the thrill of the unknown.

Wilderado aren’t chasing after hits. They’re just being themselves — and enjoying it. With Talker, they’ve hit a new stride, fueling themselves up on sharp songwriting and adventurous arrangements before setting off toward some new horizon. This is Wilderado at their best: inspired, invigorated, and answering to nobody but themselves.