Although Car Seat Headrest is not exactly the edgy name you were expecting from a group of cool, young new musicians, it perfectly describes Will Toledo and his band. Toledo started the project himself in 2010, when he was still in college.
He chose this name because he recorded the vocals of his few first albums in the back seat of his car. This was both for privacy and because he had access to so few professional resources. However, ultimately this less-than-state-of-the-art recording studio worked in his advantage, showcasing his real, raw talent.
Toledo’s fan base grew in 2011 with the debut of his seventh album, titled Twin Fantasy, which was released via Bandcamp, an online music store catering to independent artists. In total, Will Toledo released eleven self-recorded Bandcamp albums throughout his college years.
Teens of Denial, which was released last May, is Toledo’s first studio-recorded album with a real band. Ethan Ives, Andrew Katz, and Seth Dalby joined in the band for the recording. Teens of Denial has had tremendous success, even rising to number four on Rolling Stone’s “50 Best Albums of 2016.”
One article basically sums up all of the emotions that you ride while listening to the band’s album, which is nothing like you have heard before.
Rolling Stone writes that the song “Killer Whales/Drunk Drivers” is “a gorgeously tender song that uses the title analogy to unpack a dizzying load of self-loathing that, suddenly, turns into self-love, swelling like an energy cloud in a yoga-class creative visualization exercise and exploding into a sing-along chorus of “It doesn’t have be like this!” like some hollow “It Gets Better” PSA transformed into a true salvation army, one so convinced of its mission it devotes its penultimate verse to talking a drunk out of their car and instructing them to “walk” home.”
While that is a bit of mouthful and a little longer than practical if you’re simply trying to describe the album to a friend, it really could not have been said any better.
Will Toledo cites Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 To Pimp a Butterfly as an unlikely, but vital, source of inspiration. He tells Collin Brennan of Consequence of Sound that “there aren’t a lot of albums these days that are really lyrically on-point all the way through... that’s one of the major things I look for in an album, so it’s hard to find contemporary stuff that I’m really into.” Kendrick Lamar’s music does just this for him.
You will surely be surprised at the depth of Car Seat Headrest’s music, which plays with the dynamics of sound and emotion while also just being generally exceptional music to relax to after a long day of homework and exams, so give the band a listen, particularly because Toledo bears a striking resemblance to Clark Kent, and that is pretty cool.
While the band is about to embark on a tour all the way from New Orleans and Los Angeles to the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, among other places across Europe and the United States, Car Seat Headrest will be close-by this summer when they will be performing at the Governors Ball in New York.
