The Head and The Heart, “Every Shade of Blue.”

“It’s been a long year/ The wrong year/ To be left alone,” vocalist-guitarist Jonathan Russell sings on the opening title track of Every Shade of Blue, the fifth album from The Head and The Heart. It’s a heads up that the Seattle group will be attempting to address the chaos of the last two years throughout the record. Russell has noted how recent times have been both wild and difficult, but beautiful things have still happened in between and how he wanted to reflect them all. The result is a sprawling 16-song album that perhaps would have benefitted from being trimmed down, but is on the whole a joyous celebration of life – both its highs and its lows.

THATH started out as a folk and roots rock band, but 2019’s Living Mirage found them expanding into synth-pop territory. Every Shade of Blue continues in that vein; it’s full of electronic beats and radio-friendly catchy hooks.

The title track, about “a sad girl” the narrator loves, blends the group’s signature harmonies and acoustic sound with a symphonic flavor of strings. “Every little bit, can’t get enough of you/ You,” Russell sings. He says that he wants all of her; “Every shade, every shade of blue.” It’s a gentle, mellow tune expressing appreciation for his partner and room for her to grow as a person: “Promises made, sandcastles break/ Wave after wave/ Promises made, go ahead, change/ I see you the same.”

“Tiebreaker” has a modern-sounding programmed beat and the verses’ lyrical delivery have a surprising hip-hop feel to them. With a singalong chorus—“I can’t believe I almost went my whole life/ Without you in it”—this track capitalizes on Charity Rose Thielen’s high, sweet vocals (she also plays guitar and violin for the group) and how well they blend with Russell’s.

“Virginia (Wind in the Night)” finds The Head and the Heart swinging for the fences with not one, but two hooks. One of them is an anthemic chorus: “Virginia don’t sound like she used to/ Virginia don’t look like she used to.” It’s not to be confused with Train’s “Meet Virginia” – this song appears to be about Virginia the state, not an imaginary woman. It’s also a music sync supervisor’s dream; it could be slotted into any number of dramatic movies or TV shows with its portentous opening piano chords for an important quiet moment or, for a climactic scene, there’s the big chorus with Russell exclaiming, “I can feel a heart beating for me, baby!” This song hits a lot of marks emotionally in just three and a half minutes.

The sentiment in “Hurts (But It Goes Away)” is one a lot of people these days are likely to relate to. Over a driving OneRepublic-esque beat, the reassuring chorus—“Tell me that I’m going to be OK/ Tell me it hurts but it goes away”—will speak to a lot of people who lost loved ones or went through various other tough times in the two years since the pandemic began.

The record runs out of steam about halfway through. All the big firepower is front-loaded on Every Shade of Blue. The album, while slickly produced and full of potential hits and show placements, is too long and lacks cohesiveness. Every Shade of Blue was produced mostly by Jesse Shatkin (Sia, P!nk). However, “Paradigm” was produced by John Hill and Sammy Witte (Florence and The Machine, Portugal. The Man) while “Don’t Show Your Weakness,” “Shadows” and “Love We Make” were produced by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Wet).

None of these non-Shatkin-produced songs are as strong as the singles. The band had found itself reluctant to put out another tidy 12-track album, as Russell described, and so it simply did not. And that’s for better or for worse.

The Head and The Heart still have the folky charm, reminiscent of Mumford & Sons or The Lumineers, that they had when they first appeared on the scene, and their willingness to experiment with newer sounds has brought them to a sound that is uniquely their own, even if the second half of the record doesn’t pack as hard a punch.

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.