Car Seat Headrest’s New Rock Opera Doesn’t Quite Work

Lis Sinatra
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Not long before he died, Kurt Cobain gave an interview to Rolling Stone in which he lamented, among other things, that Nevermind was packed with too many great songs. “What I’ve realized is that you only need a couple of catchy songs on an album, and the rest can be bullshit Bad Company rip-offs, and it doesn’t matter,” he said. “If I was smart, I would have saved most of the songs off Nevermind and spread them out over a 15-year period.”

I think about that quote a lot, especially when I’m listening to an album by an artist or band that is several albums’ deep into a career. For Cobain, there was no choice — his favorite records delivered one top-tier track after another, and he was determined to give Nirvana fans the same level of quality. But there is something to the idea that a songwriter might only have so many great songs in him, and therefore it might be wise to be judicious with those tunes over the long haul.

Will Toledo definitely did not think that way as a young artist. Between 2010 and 2014, he put out 11 albums on Bandcamp under the name Car Seat Headrest, when he was barely out of high school. Those releases charted his rapid growth in real time, tracing his ascent from talented novice to budding virtuoso. By the time he signed with Matador in 2015, he was already an online cult hero. The following year, Car Seat Headrest released their best album and commercial breakthrough, Teens Of Denial. By then, not only was Toledo prolific in terms of albums, but he also had a habit of tucking three or four good song ideas inside a single composition, turning each number into a mini suite of melodic genius.

Since Teens Of Denial, Car Seat Headrest’s output has slowed. Work on 2020’s Making A Door Less Open was interrupted by Toledo’s decision to re-record (and, in some instances, rework) the most beloved of the Bandcamp era albums, 2011’s Twin Fantasy. And then five more years passed before this week’s release of The Scholars, a delay caused in part by Toledo’s bout with Long COVID.

Those health issues aren’t Toledo’s fault, obviously. But there is a broader sense that Car Seat Headrest’s recent work pales next to the earlier albums. The songs aren’t as grabby, and the melodies flow at a slower pace. At the same time, perhaps to compensate for this creative stagnation, Car Seat Headrest albums have gotten a lot more elaborate. Making A Door Less Open — which ranks as one of the more fascinating artifacts of the COVID lockdown era, at least from the indie-rock world — was both an attempt to make a “bigger”-sounding Car Seat Headrest record, and also a stab at post-modern “anti-celebrity” commentary. In one infamous interview, Toledo donned a mask and presented himself as an alter-ego named Trait. As for the album, it was released in three slightly different versions for vinyl, CD, and digital formats. With their alternate mixes and rejiggered tracklists, these competing iterations felt more like the product of indecision than a thoughtful artistic choice.

The Scholars has been marketed as a return to form. But while it takes a decidedly different path than Making A Door Less Open, it ends up in a similar place. For all its conceptual wonkiness — and the semi-disastrous decision to lead with the worst Car Seat Headrest ever as a single —Making A Door Less Open had some worthwhile songs that expanded the band’s record-collector rock palate with hooky electronic pop. And The Scholars, a rock opera with an impenetrable plot, packs several perfectly enjoyable rock tunes in the first half hour. The problem is the next 40 minutes, which also happen to be the heart of this often-frustrating record.

In case this needs to be said: I am a fan of rock operas. And I am a fan of contemporary rock bands making rock operas. I was excited when I heard Car Seat Headrest was launching one. Especially since it’s clear that Toledo and his bandmates — who share songwriting credit on The Scholars, significant development in not wholly positive ways — had a lot of fun with the project. The concept is outlined in knowingly silly detail in the liner notes, starting with the supposed basis being “an unfinished and unpublished poem written by my great-great-great-great-grandfather, the Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo.” The lyrics double as dialogue for a large cast of characters, including Deveraux — “the son of a backwater religious conservative” who “struggles with his sexuality and sets off to seek his own fortunes at the nearby Clown College” — featured on one of the album’s best and punchiest songs.

The key to any successful rock opera is the ability to convey what’s potentially good about a rock opera (self-aware grandiosity and genuine dramatic thrills) without getting bogged down in what’s potentially bad (caring too much about the dumb story you’ve created). Above all, the focus needs to be on the songs — they should make sense as a unified piece without needing to make sense of a unified piece (if that makes sense).

On the first five songs, Car Seat Headrest pulls that off, I think. The opening track, “CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)” is the platonic ideal of a CSH tune: Pete Townshend power chords, Ric Ocasek pop smarts, Beach Boys harmonies, a Will Toledo vocal that manages to feel uplifting without remaining completely deadpan. “The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)” is another success, bouncing along with a start-stop guitar riff that quickly transitions to a giddy acoustic strum. And “Equals” demonstrates that the radio-pleasing pop discipline of Making A Door Less Open has been further honed.

Where things take a turn are the next three tracks, which take up the bulk of the record, including the first single, the 11-minute “Gethsemane.” Not that song length is necessarily the issue here. Long songs are not unusual for a Car Seat Headrest record — one of the very best CSH tracks, “Beach-Life-In-Death,” is more than 12 minutes on the original Twin Fantasy. (And it’s one minute longer on the 2018 version.) But “Beach-Life-In-Death” needs to be that long. It has the epic drama — and the volume of high quality, pieced-together song fragments — to justify it.

“Gethsemane” starts promisingly, with pounding drums and stirring organ fills building to what promises to be an overwhelming, face-melting crescendo. But after about eight minutes, a feeling of restlessness sets in, like when you’re two hours and 12 CGI fights scenes into a three-hour Marvel movie. The two other long songs — “Reality” (11:14) and “Planet Desperation” (18:53) — prompt the same “how much of this left anyway?” feeling. Toledo and his bandmates apparently shaped the songs on The Scholars out of jams, and you feel it on these extended tracks, which sound like rough drafts that need a few rounds of rigorous editing. There are good bits scattered throughout — the fiery conclusion to “Reality,” the piano ballad section of “Planet Desperation” — but also long stretches where nothing much exciting is happening.

The problem, in other words, is that those songs don’t enough “song” in them. And that issue is not going to be solved by extra conceptual baggage. I can appreciate the theatrical flair of doing an interview in a “Darth Vaderish” mask. And I love a good rock opera. But you know what’s better than either of those things? An album that is loaded, top to bottom, with quality tunes. And that, unfortunately, hasn’t been the project of Car Seat Headrest for almost a decade now.

The Scholars is out 5/2 via Matador. Find more information here.