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a r t i s t :: Car Seat Headrest
t i t l e :: Teens of Style
d a t e :: 2015-00-00
l a b e l :: Matador
g e n r e :: Indie
s o u r c e :: CD
b i t r a t e :: 833 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V
t r a c k s :: 11
p l a y t i m e :: 46:47
s i z e :: 277.5MB
tracklist
1 Sunburned Shirts 4:05
2 The Drum 3:57
3 Something Soon 4:20
4 No Passion 2:50
5 Times To Die 6:50
6 Psst, Teenagers, Take Off Your Clo 1:00
7 Strangers 5:39
8 Maud Gone 5:58
9 Los Borrachos (I Don't Have Any Hope 6:23
Left, But the Weather is Nice)
10 Bad Role Models, Old Idols Exhumed 1:54
(Psst, Teenagers, Put Your Clothes
Back O)
11 Oh! Starving 3:51
releasenotes
Will Toledo isn't old, but he's feeling his age. He's in debt; his friends
are
getting married; his hands are frozen; he's stuck in the city; and worst of
all, his songs are starting to sound the same. The world is moving past him,
blurring into formlessness, and his music as Car Seat Headrest is an attempt
to slow down and make sense of the rush.
Teens of Style is technically a compilation, comprising songs dating back to
2011 that were re-recorded for his Matador debut. (Teens of Denial, a planned
2016 release, will be his first Matador album of entirely new material.) You
can hear the revised sound as a composite of the label's history: Guided by
Voices' ear for cracked pop oddities, Belle and Sebastian's emotional
directness, Yo La Tengo's intimate approach to jamming, Stephen Malkmus'
ability to get wordy without forgetting to rock out. As a songwriter, Toledo
is both present and detached, capable of living in a moment while floating
above it. A self-summarization comes on the brawny "Strangers", when he
deadpans a series of autobiographical quips: "Car seat is a menace to the
public," "Car seat is a genetic stop sign," "Car seat's nervous and the lights
are bright."
On that song, we find out the young Toledo fell in love with Michael Stipe: "I
took lyrics out of context and thought, 'he must be speaking to me.'" His
confusion over purposefully abstract lyrics may have turned him into a
literalist, someone endeavoring to explain every twist and turn of his
interior state. His lyrics are rapaciously intelligent, with a knack for wry
humor. Take a lyrical adjustment on the new recordings, for example, that
reflects the shift in his life status: "Times to Die" swaps a couplet about
sneaking his way to musical success into a meditation on the existence of a
higher power, like God or (even better) Matador founder Chris Lombardi ("Got
to have faith in the one above me/ Got to believe that Lombardi loves me"),
who will help decide whether or not Toledo is destined to be a cult hero.
Teens of Style has a noticeably jagged quality; unbelievably, it used to sound
even DIY-ier. (The original versions can be found on Car Seat's Bandcamp.) The
new recordings retain their rough edge, but there's luminescence in the
productionùthe percussion is crisper, the guitars are brighter, and Toledo's
singing is a lot more pronounced. The effect is an album that's bookish, but
not sedentary. He sells abstruse metaphors and lyrical concepts with every
ounce of himself, like failing to do so would mean the end of the world. In
this way, he's a cousin of artists like Joanna Newsom, Bright Eyes, or
Okkervil River, who never let their prodigious literary intelligence get in
the way of crafting something you might actually enjoy listening to.
To (sort of) quote Brandon Flowers: He's human and rocker. The existential
despair of "Something Soon" is crystallized in a blown-out chorus, while he
uses a hypnotic keyboard line to make the haunting "Maud, You're Gone" a prom
song for moody kids. A spectral choir comes through a radio at the start of
"Sunburned Shirts" before breaking into a scratchy pop gem, like George
Harrison on anti-depressants ("I haven't looked at the sun for so long/ I
forgot how much it hurt to"). Toledo's voice is weary, and carries a shred of
desperationùhe sounds like a third-generation cassette tape recording of
Julian Casablancas (who, otherwise, is his complete opposite as a frontman).
Earlier this month, I went to a Car Seat Headrest show held as part of the
annual CMJ Music Marathon, where dozens of bands go to make their reputations.
But Toledo began the set lying on the floor, with his microphone angled toward
the ground, as the band launched into "The Ending of Dramamine", a 14-minute
epic where he references Modest Mouse and sings about only thinking about
himself. If you weren't standing right at the stage, you couldn't see him. The
words flowed from the void, sung by someone so overwhelmed by the moment he
would rather disappear. I couldn't absorb them all at once but what I remember
is the crowd standing on their toes, edging their way forward, hoping to catch
a glimpse. Then, he stood up.
http://carseatheadrest.tumblr.com
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