A few steps ahead of me, The Head and the Heart’s Jon Russell is reciting the opening lines of “Jubilee,” one of the standout songs from his band’s sixth studio album, “Aperture.”

He’s delivering the lyrics in a way that feels like he’s half singing, half narrating at two times speed, reciting the words the way you do when you’re trying to remember the end of a famous stage monologue, but can only deliver the whole thing from the beginning.

“I’m playing it cool/ I’m acting real nice for a future /Livin’ in the moment /Throwin’ it away ’til it’s used up /And I live in my head /And I pull out my hair, oooh ooh /I went too hard, now I won’t be home ’til I’m useless /I’m thinking ‘bout a future.”

“I feel like that opening verse in ‘Jubilee’ kind of sums up where I was at,” he says.

For almost an hour, Russell and I—along with his amiable doodle-mix George—have been hiking along the southern shoreline of the James River, sidestepping patches of mud-slopped trail, crossing railroad tracks and threading ourselves single file along various wooded slopes. Russell suggested the idea of an outdoor trek as a means of killing two birds with one stone: subjecting himself to an interview while still feeling useful to his household by walking the dog. It’s the least he can do so his wife can concentrate her attention on their 9-week-old newborn.

“Those first days, I thought it was going to be nothing but hard and stressful,” he says of his newly established fatherhood. “Which it is, but it’s incredibly rewarding.”

Becoming a dad is only the latest in long line of consequential shifts for Russell, a sequence of professional and personal reckonings that started with “Aperture,” which arrives this Friday, May 9. It’s been almost 15 years since Russell co-founded The Head and The Heart with friends he made playing the Seattle open-mic circuit. Comprised of violinist/vocalist Charity Rose Thielen, bassist Chris Zasche, pianist Kenny Hensley, drummer Tyler Williams, and vocalist/guitarist Josiah Johnson (who left the group in 2016 and was replaced with Thielen’s husband, guitarist/vocalist Matt Gervais), the band developed significant buzz around its collaborative folk-rock arrangements and harmonies.

After selling over 10,000 copies of their self-titled debut from simple word of mouth, labels started taking notice. Signing with Sub Pop, Seattle’s holy grail of record labels, The Head and The Heart re-released its debut—expanded and remastered—in 2011, which spent 10 weeks on the Billboard 200. The record was officially certified platinum last fall, with over 1 million copies sold.

Relentless touring soon dominated the lives of the band members, opening for the likes of indie stalwarts Death Cab for Cutie, Iron and Wine, My Morning Jacket, and Vampire Weekend. Spending such extended periods of time together with very little space between for any individual respite, by the time the group released its sophomore album “Let’s Be Still” in 2013, Russell had made the decision to move back to Richmond, where he first cut his teeth as a musician after graduating high school.

“When you’ve just spent several months zigzagging the world, you’re not gonna go to your bandmates and say, ‘Hey, you wanna get pizza?’” says Russell. “You’re just trying to decompress as much as possible. And at that point, we were already planning when we would get back together to write and record. So the fact that I would have to fly in was kind of was worth it. I was just like, ‘I need to get back to Richmond.’ I’ve always loved Richmond.”

The move, though beneficial for Russell’s mental health, soon began altering the approach to his songwriting within The Head and The Heart.

“With the first two records we would get together in rehearsals and write as a band, or at least come in with songs that were started individually and then finish them as a band,” he explains. “Once I moved away, I started demoing out a lot on my own. I was in my late twenties, not sleeping a lot, didn’t have a girlfriend. I had no rhythm other than songs, songs, songs. So I would flesh out songs a lot more than I normally would before I would give them to the band.”

For the next three albums this became the template for The Head and The Heart’s songwriting, becoming more and more singular to Russell’s perspective. It all reached its purest distillation with 2022’s “Every Shade of Blue,” a record that due to the COVID-19 pandemic literally isolated the band from one another. “We did the best we could,” Russell admits. “But it definitely lost its human touch.”

Having slowly siloed himself creatively for an extended stretch of time and suddenly being confronted by it in such a literal and existential way, Russell understood that a new path—or maybe even an old path—was necessary to explore.

“I was feeling like I had forced my way into something that wasn’t actually good for the band,” says Russell. “For a while, I was following the energy. And when you’re alone, it’s your energy. There were less democratic ideas from the band. I really noticed it playing live. You see we’re all there. You still love what we do, but it’s not the same engagement. It just started feeling like, if we’re gonna continue do this, a lot of things need to change.”

The first and perhaps most crucial change was simply writing as a band again. In 2023, Russell and the rest of the group started scheduling a series of sessions at Richmond’s Montrose Recording and Seattle’s Studio Litho.

“It was the biggest breath of fresh air,” says Russell. “The way the six of us do this thing when we’re all together, it just brings us fucking joy, you know? There’s just some of these in-between ideas that only happen when you’re almost not trying or not really thinking. When you’re all in a room and you get to do that, it translates the sound and the feeling. When I listen back to the music, I just feel like I’m listening to a band that’s listening to each other and enjoying what they’re doing. It feels like the early band.”

Much like the band’s self-titled debut, “Aperture” holds an identifiable looseness of spirit to its compositions, resulting in the kind of songs that smell of bonfire smoke and flicker with themes of dark and light like fireflies at dusk. “The ideas, as they were coming, there wasn’t a lot of going back and polishing. We intentionally left imperfections. All of us agreed: Keep the mistakes, because they don’t sound like mistakes. They just sound like the song.”

As much as Russell knew going into the new album that he needed to cede control and allow greater space for the other members to have their own creative freedom and even embrace new roles—Williams, for example, makes his debut as a lead vocalist, and Hensely provides his first written lyrics and vocals—he was not fully prepared for the shift in a seamless way, he says.

“As with any art I would imagine, it is unfinished for quite a while,” he says. “When the final ideas that make it done are all in your head, you don’t get scared. But when it’s not you who has the rest of the ideas, particularly with a song, you’re just listening going, ‘I don’t see where this is going.’ And you’re just supposed to trust that these other five people have in their hearts something so meaningful to them that they can’t wait to put on there, and then it’s gonna sound good. It’s funny, I listen back now and I’m like, ‘Thank fucking god I did not blow this up.’”

Laying it on the table, Russell confesses he was in a dark place during the making of “Aperture,” struggling with the last gasps of longtime addiction to alcohol and substances. He says he didn’t realize that, for a lot of years, he was a high-functioning alcoholic and drug addict. “I ended up putting myself through rehab and have been completely sober now for almost six months—and plan on being sober for the rest of my life. I never want to have to feel that way again. But I wasn’t sober yet when we were making the record. The band definitely pulled me through the creation process.”

Russell’s recall of events is what inevitably prompted him to sing the opening lines of “Jubilee,” a song that captures the push and pull of joy and anguish. “That song, I’m basically telling the band without having to tell them, I’m kind of faking it right now,” he says. “You guys are playing this very positive sounding music. Here’s where I see myself.”

Looking back from his newfound sobriety, Russell says the song is one of his favorites from the new album.

“When I listen back to the music, I just feel like I’m listening to a band that’s listening to each other and enjoying what they’re doing. It feels like the early band.”

“Who knows how long the rest of the band had been at their wits’ end waiting for me to realize the error of my ways? But the band is like a family,” he explains. “I always learn slow, and the wrong way. I feel very grateful for this band showing me what family actually means. I’ve been able to learn a lot of lessons being in this band and finally put that into my own family.”

Walking along the trail, Russell admits that in some strange way he’s still discovering the songs of “Aperture.” Or as he puts it, falling in love with the album.

There’s a good chance this sentiment may be starting to expand beyond the record and adhere more broadly to life in general—and all the things most important to him.

He’s taking cues once again from “Jubilee,” this time from the chorus: “I think I’m falling in love again/I think I’m falling in love.”