Seattle-based indie rock band Car Seat Headrest (CSH) released their 13th studio album, “The Scholars,” on May 2. This is their first album release in five years since pandemic-era “Making a Door Less Open.”
The release of “Make a Door Less Open” in 2020 was met with much dismay as many fans consider it the band’s weakest album. Founding band member Will Toledo then began to develop ideas for “The Scholars,” but came down with health complications that jeopardized the future of the band. He was able to bounce back in the spring of 2023, which was when they began working on their rock opera album, which is as great as it is narratively dense.
CSH — originally Nervous Young Men — began as Toledo’s solo project. He privately recorded music inside his parents’ 2000 Toyota Sienna, and in true rags-to-riches fashion, garnered recognition through Bandcamp releases like “Twin Fantasy” before eventually signing with Matador Records. Since then, CSH’s lineup has included Evan Ives on guitar, Andrew Katz on drums and Seth Dalby on bass.
“Car Seat Headrest’s music speaks to this multitude of generations in part because, musically, they have synthesized their many individual influences — past and present — into a sui generis sound,” Frank DiGiacomo said in his Billboard review. “As a unit, the quartet … have played and toured together for the last 10 years or so — circa the release of 2016’s breakthrough album, ‘Teens of Denial,’ and in this time they have achieved a virtuosity that stands out among their peers.”
Ahead of the album’s release, CSH released an education-themed alternate reality game, which led fans to experience snippets of the lead single “Gethsemane.” The album’s lore is intricately wound, and the care and thought that went into the worldbuilding and anticipation of the album is exceedingly apparent. Toledo invites listeners to investigate its plethora of easter eggs and references.
“The Scholars” is an assemblage of various influences, including iconic rock motifs from prior decades and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” The tracks concern the fictional characters who attend Parnassus University, a place that Toledo contrived.
For instance, “Gethsemane” is about a character named Rosa who has the ability to heal others by absorbing their pain, which entangles her with nefarious forces. Each character’s eccentric narrative functions as an allegory with modern-day resonance, despite the fact that they inhabit a fictional realm.
“Each track builds off the last to develop a defiant, post-internet work concerned with alienation, multiplicity, and meaning-making in our overly extracted system of data,” Leah Johnson said in her FLOOD Magazine review. “It’s a necessary disturbance and complete invasion of the reality we live in today, and it reminds us of how the constructed, performative nature of identity can often come at the cost of something greater. Completely career-turning, Car Seat Headrest hasn’t been this bold since ‘Teens of Denial.’”
“The Scholars” grapples with existential themes, like darkness, pain, and spirituality. It is also a lengthy album, with “Planet Desperation,” the longest CSH song, running just short of 19 minutes. However, the entire song is worth sticking through for its unexpected tonal shifts and pop-y twists and turns.
“As for longtime Car Seat Headrest fans well-acquainted with the band’s oeuvre, the esotericism and conceptuality of ‘The Scholars’ could be a draw just as much as a deterrence, especially since it’s been so long since we’ve heard this band playing to their strengths than against them,” Grace Robins-Somerville said in her Stereogum review. “‘Return to form’ is a bit of a misnomer. ‘The Scholars’ is a band laying out the impulses and fascinations that they’ve been leaning into for their entire career, and letting themselves fall in headfirst.”
With a U.S. tour ahead of CSH, and an abundance of lore and easter eggs within “The Scholars” to comb through, this is definitely an exciting time for both new and devoted CSH fans.
Tessa Kang is an Arts & Entertainment Staff Writer. She can be reached at tokang@uci.edu.
Edited by Lillian Dunn and Xinyu Zhang.