A review of Car Seat Headrest‘s revered Album.

[Foreword: I co-wrote this article with Adrian, an incredible writer and friend of mine. He wrote the second half of this piece, and encouraged my earliest ideas of beginning to write again. I hope you enjoy.]

Twin Fantasy feels like a scrawled motivational quote inside a dive bar’s bathroom stall, a jagged “you’ll be okay, friend” amidst a complete sensory bombardment. Twin Fantasy is an acceptance of life’s messiness – or rather an abandonment of perfection, because it’s all about stories, and we know that good lives make bad stories – according to our frontman Will Toledo.

I often know I’m going to love something when it totally overwhelms and dumbfounds me at first. This album, front to back, is the conceptual and technical version of losing wire headphones in your hoodie for a couple of weeks, and then sitting on your floor untangling them so you can listen to your favourite song.

After Car Seat Headrest released their 2016 album Teens of Denial, they did exactly what one would expect of any nostalgia-ridden garage band, and remastered an album Toledo recorded on his dusty laptop at nineteen. It was injected with a new sort of glamour and a more confident garishness. They finally had some coins to spend at this point, but never abandoned that original feel of teenage yearning and vulnerability. Like The Killers’ Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll and The Great Gatsby, this album is twisted and feverish in an illustrious sort of way. It’s all a big party, but the host is clearly going through something. The tracks alternate between layered chaos and vocals stripped bare. It’s basically the constant ebb-and-flow that is “we’re so up!” and “it’s so over…”

Toledo’s work is often dubbed part of the Male Manipulator cohort of the music world because it’s easy to proclaim “hey, you won’t get this (dummy)!”

You’ll get it. Anyone can. And we’ll get it in different ways. That’s the point of art and music.

The only thing you need to be concerned about is falling victim to the hypnotic vocal loops and spellbinding monologues weaved into the album – maybe they’ll manipulate you into loving them. Your ex boyfriend and his indie band couldn’t!

This is the first time I’ve seen an album destroy the fourth wall with a heavy-duty bulldozer. Toledo isn’t singing at you – he’s speaking directly to you. He’s saying hey man, here’s my stream of consciousness with a side of guitar riffs. Maybe some drums too. He quite literally spoon-feeds you his creative thought process, while somehow still maintaining the mystique of a piece open to interpretation.

Here’s what he tells you in the first, titular song, Twin Fantasy (Those Boys):

And if it is just a fantasy

Then anything can happen from here

The contract is up, the names have been changed,

So pour one out, whoever you are

These are only lyrics now.

The monologue of Nervous Young Inhumans cuts like a knife. It hits you with the absurdity of desperately proclaiming your own virtue, which I think is pretty rampant in our digital age.

I am a good person. I am a powerful person.

I don’t believe in evil. I think that evil is an idea created by others to avoid dealing with their own nature. I understand my own nature. Good and evil have nothing to do with it.

I understand myself. I control myself. I control everything within myself. My domain is my domain. I can lie on my back and affect the lives of those I love without moving a finger.

But I would only affect them in good ways. I don’t waste time on evil. I’m a good person.

Is this thing on?

This monologue is seductive – it tries to lure you into the heart of a seemingly perfect person. Although, frankly, it ends up coming across as unsettling and uncanny. My fellow girls will endure this feeling whenever they they walk into that dive bar I mentioned earlier. It’s unsettling because it’s canonically not human. Just like the title, it’s nervous and inhuman. There’s a moment Toledo’s carapace inevitably cracks and insecurity reveals itself. Is this thing on? Can you guys hear me? Is anyone listening to me being perfect right now? I’m in control if you’re listening. Someone hold me, I am worthy because I’m good, and only good.

So let’s meet up in uncanny valley, Toledo says.

…

You’ve just been singing about girls. What do you know about girls?

…Is this on? Adam, are you there?

This is the moment when Toledo realises that maybe, he needs to touch grass. Pursuing utter control will not make us omnipotent and untouchable – it will isolate and taunt us. Don’t try to be like Icarus, man. Remember that being untouchable means that nobody can hold you. Your domain is not your domain. Your domain is everything and everyone, because no matter how tough we desire to be, we are hard-wired to need each other. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

We are all those dogs on that stark white album cover, clinging on to one another, covering the parts where our lines don’t quite connect.

This idea that you need to be fallible and prone to screw-ups and bad stories recurs throughout the album. A person immune to heartache and pain and grief is immune to their own humanity. We tend to perform for an invisible audience, unaware that people can and will love us off the stage, despite it all.

I’m sorry for bombarding you with quotes, but I think this is what Leonard Cohen meant when he wrote “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” I got the words from a girl band called Boygenius, by the way, I don’t just know literary classics like that. I just listen to too much music.

The eerily repeated “keep smoking, I love you,” in the beginning of the album is echoed with “stop smoking, we love you,” later on. Again, we see it happening. The people we love will screw us over sometimes, endow us with bad habits and maybe even stand complicit in our own self-sabotage. It is a very human thing to get so close to someone we love that we end up on the other side of them. But no matter how broken we feel, we’ll hear it after all. We love you, we love you.

There’s no devil on one shoulder and angel on the other, they’re just two normal people.

If Nervous Young Inhumans cuts like a knife, Sober to Death twists that knife.

I remember listening to the song at a beach sundowners with my friends on someone’s sandy JBL (Beach-life-in-death might’ve been a more apt song to pick off the album). I associate it with some of my favourite people. Like the rest of Twin Fantasy, it’s brooding and has some dark themes. But don’t get me wrong, it feels like a happy song to listen to. Sober to death precedes the album’s fraternal twin, High to Death. I think the song’s about the feeling of sobering up after the high of loving someone, the heavy hangover. Not that I’ve experienced that, or whatever. I’m untouchable!

Play it now – from the beginning.

You’ll hear the guitar gently inviting you in. And a keyboard holding the door. But wait, you should know I truly have zero technical music knowledge, and I’m not totally sure what instruments are happening half of the time. But I’d like to convince myself it’s in a Rick Rubin sort of way – no technicalities, just a feeling.

Anyways, soon you’ll hear a whiny voice, and you’ll kind of feel bad for the guy.

Lovely lovely

In your jeans, frenzy

Another movie that I didn’t watch with you

Another movie and we’re gonna have to move

This is a reference to the Hitchcock film Frenzy, about a psycho killer. So cute!

Nothing works

Nothing works for everyone

Good stories are bad lives

Good stories are bad lives

Pause. Now we’re at the chorus that made this band.

Take your hands off your neck and

Hold on to the ghost of my body

You know that good lives make bad stories

You can text me

When punching mattresses gets old

Don’t think it’ll always be this way

Not comforted by anything I say

We were wrecks before we crashed into each other

It’s all about how we all need each other, how our own flaws shine in a different light when we see them in someone else. We’re all wrecks without each other. More often than not, we’re wrecks together too. And that’s okay. Loving anyone – lovers, friends – is about the honour of being privy to the full spectrum of someone’s humanity – their pain, their bouts of grief and doubt, their triumphs, and the poignant realisation that they’ll be there for yours, too.

Anyways, text me when punching mattresses gets old.

Time for Adrian’s thoughts on Bodys.

Have you ever found a song that makes you think that your speaker isn’t quite loud enough? Have you ever found a song where you don’t quite know the lyrics, but that doesn’t matter because it’s more about the feeling, anyways? Have you ever found a song where the music is such a cacophony, such a mess of drums, and guitar, and vocals, and whatever else and yet… It’s perfect?

That, my friend, is precisely how I would describe Bodys by Car Seat Headrest.

I first listened to Bodys many, many years ago, and this was the song that got me into Car Seat Headrest’s music. It was my dad who played it for me, actually. We were driving somewhere, as one does, when my dad said, “hey, I found this new band. They’ve got a cool name, and a weird sound but… well, just listen.” He didn’t say it like that (probably), but like the lyrics of this song, it’s about the feeling. I sat back, felt my head lean against the headrest, and waited. And no, the irony of listening to Car Seat Headrest for the first time, while in a car, with my head against the headrest, is not lost on me. But then, I did exactly what he said. I listened.

And I never stopped.

Go listen to those first twenty-six seconds of the song. It’s the perfect introduction. The drums, the whining drone, the high-pitched screech before the repeating guitar, it all works to set up what this song is going to be. It’s weird noise, it’s bouncing drums, and it’s sounds that make you wonder, “what the hell is that?” And then, just then, as you’re trying to piece together all of these bits that don’t quite make sense, that’s when the guitar comes in. It guides you into the rhythm of the song. It’s the first piece of solid ground after the messy, sickly sweet waters of those first twenty-six seconds. That’s what I love about this band. They add layers to their music, one block at a time, whether it’s another instrument or a vocal, they quite literally build their songs from the ground up right in front of you. And just when you think you’re satised with all of the levels of sound, they go and add another. And another. They push you (and your ears) to the limit, and just when you think you can’t take it anymore, they ease off. But not for long. Never for long.

The guitar guides you right to the first lyrics, and they might just be some of the most relatable words many of us will hear:

That’s not what I meant to say at all

I mean I’m sick of meaning, I just wanna hold you

We’ve all been there. Anxious while talking to someone you have a crush on, but you’re not quite sure how to approach the subject that maybe, just maybe, they might have a crush on you too. And then you say something embarrassing that will probably keep you up at night, but you’ll only realise that later because right now, in this moment, you’re with them, and all you want to do is wrap your arms around them. That’s what this song is about. You and them. The urgent feeling that there isn’t much time left. But it’s also about comfort and discomfort. Being yourself with that person, who understands your flaws and draws you out of your comfort-zone, and makes you a better person for it. And you let it happen, because why not? There’s only so much time, why not spend it with that person? And why does everything have to have a meaning, why can’t things just be? Why can’t the feeling be enough?

And then, the lyrics shift:

Is it the Chorus yet?”

“No, it’s just the building of the verse

So when the chorus does come, it’ll be more rewarding.

The break in the fourth wall is obvious enough. It’s as if the band is saying, “no, we haven’t got to the chorus yet. Trust us, you’ll know when we’re there. For now, just listen.” But it’s also reminiscent of that moment immediately after the embarrassment of whatever it was that you said. The quiet lull in the conversation, before you nally break the silence and say something like, “is it time to go?” And they respond with something else (it doesn’t matter what they said, you probably didn’t hear it because of your pounding heart), but it gives you the feeling that this is just the beginning, and these things take time. Your heart skips a beat. You start to listen a little more.

That feeling of hope is reflected immediately after those lines, as the sounds start to build up for the first time in the song. That inkling of confidence grows, like the music, and you start to realise that maybe this shouldn’t be such a scary thing. Everybody is figuring everything out in their own way, and that looming feeling of time running out starts to fade away, because:

Everybody’s swinging their hips (now)

Everybody’s giving the waitress tips

Everybody’s dancing all of the dances

Everybody’s dancing every dance right now

Everybody is doing their own thing, in their own time. It slowly dawns on you that you’re not alone, either. That’s when the music hits a peak. A cluster of noise and hard notes that reect the whirling, chaotic moment that is life. And there’s that one person again, who stands through it all. Maybe, just maybe, they’re calm ground – like the guitar earlier on, maybe they’re some sort of guide through this mess. Something you can hold on to:

Those are you got some nice shoulders

I’d like to put my hands around them

I’d like to put my hands around them

And wouldn’t you know, right after admitting that, the guitar comes through once again, calm and steady, like an old friend guiding you by the hand through a jumbled crowd. But this time, there’s a feeling of confidence to the guitar, to the beat in general. There’s a bounce to the step, an acceptance that what will happen will happen, and you, like everybody else, will figure it out along the way. And even if you don’t:

Well, so what?

We’re young

We’re thin (most of us)

We’re alive (most of us)

That’s just it. So what? We’re alive, and that’s what counts. But notice how the main guitar that we’ve come to love, drops away at this point. It’s just drums and a hint of bass covering this part, and it seems as if this a fresh take, a new conclusion that has been drawn which is so starkly different from the character who said those first opening lines. Meaning has been replaced with feeling, and they finally feel alive (mostly). With this realisation comes the anxious feeling that life inevitably implies death, but that this is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s a motivating factor. Not everything needs meaning, and nothing should wait, because:

Don’t you realize

Our bodies could fall apart at any second?

I am terrified

Your body could fall apart at any second

And then there’s a total shift. A lull, or the quiet before the storm. A moment of vulnerability where the guitar transforms into an acoustic version of itself, and it feels as if the lyrics and the guitar are speaking to one another. Everything drops away except for these two layers, and the sounds begin to build one by one:

And I know that I don’t talk a lot

But I know that you don’t care a lot

As long as we move our bodies around a lot

We’ll forget that we forgot how to talk

When we dance, when we

When we dance, when we

The moment of calm is shattered by the realisation that everything, everything, is going to be okay. The music builds and then collides together. The drums hammer away, the guitar rocks and slides, the vocals hit emotional highs, and at this point, all of your neighbours are listening too. The characters, whether some random main character or you and that one person, no longer need meaning or talking. They just feel. And that’s what this last bit of the song is. It’s a feeling. A little bit of anxiety, a little bit of joy, a little bit of love, and a lot of relief. Relief in the fact that our time is finite, and it sure doesn’t have to have a meaning, but that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless, either. We all make mistakes. We all say embarrassing things. Maybe we’ll find that person, maybe we won’t. We’re all figuring it out, in our own way. And that’s okay. As long as we dance to the rhythm, follow the guitar, and sing so loud our neighbours can hear it, we’ll make it. And if you ever have any doubt, just wait.

You’re probably not at the chorus, yet.