Car Seat Headrest: Twin Fantasy

Justin Jacobs on March 26, 2018


Car Seat Headrest seemed to pop out of nowhere in 2016—a young guy with glasses raging like he was rattling MTV’s buzzbin alongside Pavement and Modest Mouse. But Will Toledo’s crawl into your indie-rock playlist was, in truth, a slow one. By the time Teens of Denial was released, he’d already quietly dropped an impressive catalog of albums via Bandcamp. Now, he’s returning with arguably his best: Twin Fantasy, originally a knotty, lo-fi guitar album released in 2011, rerecorded with some extra muscle and clarity. Toledo wasn’t even 20 when he created Twin Fantasy , and it’s fascinating to hear the matured songwriter returning to these complex songs with often agonizing lyrics of sexual identity, mental health, drugs and, you know, teen angst. The 90-second acoustic dirge “Stop Smoking (We Love You)” is gorgeously effective—the title is the lyrics, plus, “And we don’t want you to die.” Elsewhere, he’s crafted intricate alt-rock epics. “Beach Life-in-Death” is 13 minutes of crunchy, propulsive guitar building to explosive climaxes, strung together with soul-searching lyrics: Toledo recalls faking drunk when he came out to friends to defer the heaviness. “Pretty soon you’ll find some nice young Satanist with braces,” he sings. “You can take him home to your mother and say, ‘Ma, this is my brother.’” Toledo’s level of lyrical detail rang a chord with thousands of Bandcamp fans—and this rerecorded version of some of his most personal songs is a captivating dive back into the head of a teenager through the eyes of a man.

Artist: Car Seat Headrest
Album: Twin Fantasy
Label: Matador