The Head and the Heart go back to their roots with new album “Aperture”

The conversation starts with an inquiry about Phoenix's weather. Matty Gervais, a guitarist and vocalist for The Head and the Heart, currently lives in Seattle with his fellow bandmate and wife, Charity Rose.

Despite the 1,400-mile difference between Seattle and Phoenix, the weather seemed to perfectly align. It was sunny in both cities after a week of rain and clouds.

The band has four other members: two of whom reside in Richmond, Virginia, and two who live in Washington state and Los Angeles.

“Half of us are from the West Coast… We love touring the country and going everywhere, but there's something about it that just feels like home,” Gervais said. “Even though we're from Washington, it feels like home to be close to the Pacific Ocean.”

The band has a song called “West Coast” on their sixth studio album, “Aperture.”

The track chronicles this bi-coastal relationship that many of the members have, sometimes making it hard to get all six of them in a room together at the same time.

Rose said that although it would be nice to have a sense of casualness that comes from all living in the same place, like in the early days of the band, the distance just means they have to set intentions to get together and make the lost time worth it.

“Seeing each person in a station, grabbing their respective instrument or a different one, and just seeing what will happen,” Rose said. “What kind of formations and magic will happen just with our voices and kind of quieting everything else around us?” Gervais and Rose mentioned the title track as being one of their favorite songs on the album. Sitting at the bottom, it’s the last song on the record. It’s a culmination of both the album itself and everything the band has been through.

“It’s emblematic of that (raw and honest) process and looking back toward the past, but also being present and also looking toward the future,” Said Rose.

Gervais mentioned “Finally Free” as being another favorite track on the record because of the “magical experience” that happened during its recording, where it seemed as though each band member was directly responding to Rose’s enchanting vocals to create a song that “feels like a warm hug.”

The band joked about calling the new album “The Head and the Heart Two” because it felt like they were “going back to (their) roots.” Rose said she feels like they couldn’t have made “Apterture” if the band hadn’t been together for so long.

When their self-titled album came out in 2011, they had just signed to Sub Pop, marking a 14-year journey of collaboration and growth within the band. In 2016, they switched to Warner Bros. and released their first major-label album, “Signs of Light.” To them, signing with record labels opened them up to a wider reach and greater success, as well as a high amount of creative control.

“Aperture” feels cyclical, especially in comparison with the making of their first album. When they started, they had barely any money and hadn’t yet been signed to a label, which brewed “magic and uncertainty.”

Now, after getting new management again, but this time having more flexibility with deadlines and creative control, it feels like the band has the same exciting energy they started with, with more maturity.

“We experienced and journeyed through the creative versus the business of these last few albums, and we learned so much about ourselves and about the process,” Rose said. “Maintaining the healthy dynamic in relationships has been a lot of the work, and the extension is this creativity that no one could have created individually.”

The Head and the Heart's Aperature Tour stops at the Arizona Financial Theater at 7 p.m. on Sept. 30.