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"  Photo: Getty Images As thrilling, gratifying, and completely inspiring as the past two years and change of touring have been for The Head and the Heart, it&amp;#039;s time for something new\u2014and that something&amp;#039;s coming in the form of their hotly anticipated sophomore record, Let&amp;#039;s Be Still, on October 15. Though the album itself won&amp;#039;t see the light of day for weeks, the Seattle alt-folk, rock sextet has been testing out the new stuff on rapt audiences over the course of the past few months, letting the clap-happy &amp;quot;Shake&amp;quot; and the earnest build of &amp;quot;Another Story&amp;quot; sweep over curious audiences eager to hear what the band&amp;#039;s been mulling over since &amp;quot;Lost In My Mind&amp;quot; became a playlist classic in 2011. Fans devoured Let&amp;#039;s Be Still&amp;#039;s additions to the Head and the Heart&amp;#039;s live show at Outside Lands, between their banner set Saturday afternoon and an impromptu surprise jam at one of the side stages in the middle of the woods of Golden Gate Park. Below, Josiah Johnson, Jonathan Russell, and Charity Rose Thielen walk us through the process behind their latest effort, how their travels worked their way into their new songs and why Let&amp;#039;s Be Still is their most instinctual record yet. It seems as though you&amp;#039;ve been perpetually touring in support of The Head and the Heart. When you listen to &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s Be Still,&amp;#039; what&amp;#039;s the most jarring, drastic change for you between records? Russell: Lyrically, I feel like there are a pretty general theme of new starts on the first record: new beginnings, meeting new people and living in a new area. It&amp;#039;s sort of like being excited about what&amp;#039;s coming and what&amp;#039;s about to happen. Let&amp;#039;s Be Still isn&amp;#039;t necessarily narrative, but we&amp;#039;re drawing from being in the middle of something as opposed to being at the front of the start of something. Johnson: On The Head and the Heart, nothing was done yet, but everything was possible and exciting. With Let&amp;#039;s Be Still, we took advantage of those possibilities, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean that everything all of a sudden is magical and wonderful. There are implications and sacrifices made when you pursue something so full throttle and full-hearted that you have to leave things behind, or there are complications with relationships that suffer from you being gone all the time. There&amp;#039;s more intricacies with this record in that way, whereas the first record was very rashly idealistic, in some sense, and this one&amp;#039;s just kind of picking at that kind of minutiae. It&amp;#039;s about a life that&amp;#039;s being well lived, but one that&amp;#039;s not necessarily easy.  In what ways did &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s Be Still&amp;#039; challenge you? Russell: For me, it was having too much time and a larger budget, as well as no time beforehand. We toured on the first record pretty much up until a month or two before we were to start recording the new record, and that was without really working on song arrangements. We didn&amp;#039;t have nearly as much time together going into the studio this time around\u2014some of the songs were pretty much written in the studio. We had a budget; we had more time when we were in there, so we could afford it. That worked for us and against us. Sometimes, if you&amp;#039;ve had a little too much time, you start over-thinking something. With one song, we create three different versions of it, only to come back around and realize that the first version we ever really wrote in a sound check that one time, without thinking about it, was exactly how it wound up on the record. Thielen: Yeah, that happened on a couple of songs, like &amp;quot;Another Story&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Summertime.&amp;quot;  It sounds like you wrote a lot of &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s Be Still&amp;#039; on the road. Did you write this while traveling or stationary? Johnson: Some of them, but they were always the acoustic versions of these songs that we had. Russell: When you&amp;#039;re on the road, you have to allow yourself to be ADD and frazzled all the time because you&amp;#039;ve got interviews, radio station things, sound checks, and shows to play. You&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;God I need a nap right now.&amp;quot; For songs with any sort of weight or insight in the arrangements or the lyrics, it&amp;#039;s really hard to find time to focus. As a band, we don&amp;#039;t really flesh things out on the road. We just never have time, and if we do have time, everybody&amp;#039;s so exhausted that nobody wants to play music.   What grabbed you the first time you heard the final masters for your new material? Russell: I think this record sounds like it was made by a band, like, a well-oiled machine. Johnson: I think everyone who&amp;#039;s seen us live knows how important the bass, drums, and rhythm section is to our band. On The Head and the Heart the drums are super muted, and it sounds like a songwriter record. Let&amp;#039;s Be Still sounds more like how we play live, which is a band with six members as opposed to a songwriter with a backing band. Musically, we think much more like a rock band, and so that was an interesting dissonance in most of our heads the entire time that we were being called just a folk band.  Thielen: I think it&amp;#039;s because we all have such a mix of influences. It&amp;#039;s not just folk music, even though we pay attention to songwriting. Pop melody obviously stands the test of time. We listen to soul, and jazz. We have such a range of influences that has come across a little more with tones, sounds, and playing electric, which we&amp;#039;ve added to the second record. The folk songwriting, that carries through it all.  Looking back on the experience you had making &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s Be Still,&amp;#039; which part of it is one you wish your fans could&amp;#039;ve been present for? What&amp;#039;s a vivid memory from the studio you&amp;#039;d love to repeat?  Johnson: &amp;quot;Another Story&amp;quot; always stands out. One night after we were trying to do basic tracking for some song that was already written, Jon was sitting in the vocal booth, and everyone was out in the main waiting or living room. He started playing a song that he had written by himself, and you could kind of hear it through the booth by the soundboard in the control room. Everyone was like, &amp;quot;Oh, interesting!&amp;quot; and one by one we walked into the room and started playing along very naturally. No one had ever heard the song before. It wasn&amp;#039;t like, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s start arranging the song!&amp;quot; Two hours later, it was finished, and that&amp;#039;s the arrangement that&amp;#039;s on the record, from beginning to end. Russell: While some songs went through multiple versions and multiple hacks before they come back to the final product, this one was literally written and recorded within two hours.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a16966/the-head-and-the-heart-outside-lands-2013/>