The Scholars
Will Toledo’s music as Car Seat Headrest has always *felt* like opera whether he called it that or not—at least, few other indie bands have made the droll monotonies of being an outcast sound so grand. A concept album nominally about a med-school student who discovers her secret powers to heal patients by literally absorbing their pain (yep!), *The Scholars* is both Toledo and his band’s most conventionally “big” album (soaring choruses, dramatic turns, multi-part songs) and its most cryptic, tucking all those big, obvious gestures into the folds of a story that feels just out of reach by design. The short songs hit hardest (“The Catastrophe,” “Devereaux”), but the long ones are where they get to make their weird stadium-sized dreams come true. Case in point, the 19-minute centerpiece “Planet Desperation”: Toldeo howls, “When I get to the pearly gates, will I see you on the inside pointing at me/Mouthing ‘There he is, officer—there’s the prick I warned you about.” Then they get to sound like The Who. Then a little bit like Genesis. Then the hand-drum section comes in.
In aiming to write a rock opera for the playlist era, Will Toledo crafts some of his band’s most inspired compositions—but weighs them down with a confusing plot and endless stylistic changeups.
While there is some serious world building on The Scholars, it's the punchiest Car Seat Headrest have sounded in the best part of a decade.
A psychedelic, classic rock mashup that absorbs and expands on the sound Car Seat Headrest have claimed as their own.
Car Seat Headrest’s ‘The Scholars’ is a critical reminder that rock ‘n’ roll can and often should be an audacious thing.
The Scholars by Car Seat Headrest album review by David Saxum for Northern Transmissions. The LP drops on May 2nd via Matador Records