Hello, everyone!
I hope you enjoyed my first post on The Write Teacher(s) and that you’ve had a chance to check out Dawes. And if you did check them out, I hope you liked them.
My next artist is one that I first heard on Pandora radio: the Head and the Heart. After months of their song “Down in the Valley” playing nearly every time I played my folk station, and after getting over my mild fear of their self-titled debut’s cover art (a woman posed next to someone wearing a creepy sheep mask), I recently decided to see what else the Head and the Heart had to offer.
And I really like what I heard.
Hailing from Seattle, the Head and the Heart is a six-piece band, that, according to the bio on their website, named themselves for the conflicts and the beauty that exist in the relentless pull and tug between our logic and our emotions. Though their debut album is short (only 10 songs), it’s packed with some of the rougher emotions that accompany the human experience: confusion and disarray (“Cats and Dogs”), wanting to right wrongs with a lover (“Honey Come Home”), and worry (“Lost In My Mind”).
And yet…the instrumentation isn’t all that gloomy; if anything, many of the tracks sound downright cheery, laced with infectious piano that will leave you bobbing your head and drumming your fingers on your desk (or playing air piano, if you’re stuck without a solid surface). One of my favorite tracks, “Rivers and Roads,” was recently featured on The New York Times website, and it so beautifully captures the pain that change and leaving behind loved ones can bring. And yet there’s hope in the chorus, as soaring as the crescendo of piano and drums that carry it to the end, yet as sweet as singer Charity Rose Theilen’s voice as she leads her fellow vocalists in singing it.
According to their Facebook page, the Head and the Heart are currently working on more music. They have no tour dates listed right now, but, be sure to stay tuned to www.theheadandtheheart.com for updates. And be sure to check them out on Facebook and Twitter.
Live, Love, Learn,