#19 - The Head and the Heart - Rhythm & Blues
There are a lot of folksy alternative groups who owe their current success to The Head and the Heart and their eponymous debut album from 2010. Since then, the band has been an indie rocket ship, and their most recent album "Signs of Light" peaking at #5 on the Billboard Top 200. The production has been ramped up and the band has forsaken much of their dialed-back, independent sound, but it's still a solid disc with lead singer All We Ever Knew climbing to the top of the US Alternative and Adult Alternative charts. I had the pleasure of seeing the band perform an intimate acoustic performance a few years back and I was quite impressed with the amount of passion this band pours into their art.
Rhythm & Blues has a pulsing back-beat of drums and piano accompanying Josiah Johnson and Jonathan Russell's harmonious voices. As is typical with many of the songs on the record, there seems to be a lot going on in this song, but at no point does it become disjointed or lack precision. In fact, for a folk song it's exceptionally tightly produced. I also love the line "stepped on my blue suede shoes, you made Elvis go crazy". The video is peculiarly strung together and features the band performing to a mostly-empty auditorium in costumes that could only have been purchased at a local thrift store hours before the shoot. The song itself reached #2 on the Adult Alternative charts and finished up the year with just short of 11 million streams on Spotify.
Title: Rhythm & Blues
Artist: The Head and the Heart
Album: Signs of Light
Previous #19s
2016: Metric - The Shade
2015: The Frozen Ocean - Kerosene
2014: Destiny Potato - Take A Picture
2013: Relient K - PTL
2012: Silversun Pickups - Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings)
2011: The Knux - Razorblade
2010: Demon Hunter - Collapsing (ft Bjorn Strid)
2009: Parachute - She Is Love
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