On the back of a triumphant UK tour and sold-out show at London’s Roundhouse, Car Seat Headrest has announced a live return to the UK in November for his biggest headline shows to date.
The four-date run will see the band performing in Cardiff, Nottingham and Manchester, culminating in a headline show at London’s O2 Brixton Academy on November 8, before continuing to further European dates.
The band will be bringing the expansive sound of their new album Twin Fantasy – a re-recorded, re-imagined version of Car Seat Headrest’s 2011 classic – to the stage, the band has expanded to a seven-piece, featuring two drummers, three guitarists, a bassist, and Will Toledo confidently stepping into centre stage as frontman.
Car Seat Headrest performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded April 24th, 2018.
Songs: Uncontrollable Urge Fill In The Blank Sober To Death / Powderfinger Bodys
Last week something beautiful came to fruition. Following a certain kind of bromance, the two bands connected after Smash Mouth proclaimed their love for Car Seat Headrest on twitter. The bands were then later egged on to collaborate. And they did.
Last week, Car Seat Headrest and Smash Mouth premiered their respective covers of each other’s work on SiriusXMU. Smash Mouth did a rendition of the “Teens of Style” track ‘Something Soon,’ while Car Seat Headrest took on Smash Mouth’s ‘Fallen Horses’ from the album 1999’s “Astro Lounge”.
Now CSH have shared their version for you all to enjoy in your own time. The brilliant version is what covers should be, an interpretation of a classic track by a different artist and Toledo and Co. really make the song their own.
Car Seat Headrest has unveiled the final single before the release of his new album Twin Fantasy, which is out on the 16th February on Matador Records.
This time it is the album opener My Boy (Twin Fantasy), which kicks off with a sparse, plaintive declaration of “my boy, we don’t see each other much”, and blossoms into a towering sonic climax, with the mantra of “It’ll take some time, but somewhere down the line / We won’t be alone”.
It is our favourite so far from the reimagined version of his album originally released in 2011.
Will Toledo always knew he would return to Twin Fantasy. He never did complete the work. Not really. Never could square his grand ambitions against his mechanical limitations. Listen to his first attempt, recorded at nineteen on a cheap laptop, and you’ll hear what Brian Eno fondly calls “the sound of failure” – thrilling, extraordinary, and singularly compelling failure. Will’s first love, rendered in the vivid teenage viscera of stolen gin, bruised shins, and weird sex, was an event too momentous for the medium assigned to record it.
Even so, even awkward and amateurish, Twin Fantasy is deeply, truly adored. Legions of reverent listeners carve rituals out of it: sobbing over Famous Prophets, making out to Cute Thing, dancing their asses off as Bodysclimbs higher, higher. The distortion hardly matters. You can hear him just fine. You can hear everything. And you can feeleverything: his hope, his despair, his wild overjoy. He’s trusting you – plural you, thousands of you – with the things he can’t say out loud. I pretended I was drunk when I came out to my friends, he sings – and then, caught between truths, backtracks: I never came out to my friends. We were all on Skype, and I laughed and changed the subject.
You might be imagining an extended diary entry, an angsty transmission from a bygone LiveJournal set to power chords and cranked to eleven. You would be wrong. Twin Fantasy is not a monologue. Twin Fantasyis a conversation. You know, he sings, that I’m mostly singing about you. This is Will’s greatest strength as a songwriter: he spins his own story, but he’s always telling yours, too. Between nods to local details – Harper’s Ferry, The Yellow Wallpaper, the Monopoly board collecting dust in his back seat – he leaves room for the fragile stuff of your own life, your own loves. From the very beginning, alone in his bedroom, in his last weeks of high school, he knew he was writing anthems. Someday, he hoped, you and I might sing these words back to him.
Early next year, Car Seat Headrest will release a new version of Twin Fantasy. “It was never a finished work,” Will says, “and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.” He has, now, the benefit of a bigger budget, a full band in fine form, and endless time to tinker. According to him, it took eight months of mixing just to get the drums right. But this is no shallow second take, sanitized in studio and scrubbed of feeling. This is the album he always wanted to make. It sounds the way he always wanted it to sound.
It’s been hard, stepping into the shoes of his teenage self, walking back to painful places. There are lyrics he wouldn’t write again, an especially sad song he regards as an albatross. But even as he carries the weight of that younger, wounded Will, he moves forward. He grows. He revises, gently, the songs we love so much. In the album’s final moments, in those apologies to future me’s and you’s, there is more forgiveness than fury.
This, Will says, is the most vital difference between the old and the new: he no longer sees his own story as a tragedy. From the new ‘Twin Fantasy’ available February 16th on Matador Records
The E Street Band. The Revolution. The Band. The list of legendary backing groups could go on and on, and while Naked Giants aren’t on that list yet, they do currently have the gig backing up one of music’s most exciting rising songwriters, Car Seat Headrest. But, like many backing bands, Naked Giants are also their own band, and they have been making music in their native Seattle since 2015. On March 30th, they’ll offer up their debut full-length, SLUFF, via New West Records, as they prepare for a tour with Naked Giants where they’ll serve as both openers and as part of the headlining act.
To announce the record, Naked Giants offer up the Sean Downey-directed video for “TV,” full of retro swagger and guitar-swinging irreverence that taps into the still-beating heart of the genre. In the band’s bio, drummer Henry LaVallee notes, “I just want to make as much noise and have as much fun and get as sweaty as I can, and if that resonates with people, that’s who I want in my life.” And that philosophy is on full display in the clip, as the song swells to a full-on psychedelic freakout before its close.
Check out the video above, and look for Naked Giants debut record SLUFF on March 30th.
Car Seat Headrest, aka Will Toledo, has re-imagined and re-recorded his excellent 2011 Bandcamp masterpiece, Twin Fantasy, and it will come out on 16th February via Matador Records. It was a record Toldeo always knew he would return to (in fact it was part of his original deal with Matador), so far from a conventional re-recording, the follow up to 2016’s seismically brilliant Teens of Denial is a wholly revelatory, epic and visionary new work. With a seven-piece band in tow (including members of Naked Giants), Car Seat Headrest will bring its explosive and revelatory live show to Australia, Europe, and select West Coast cities through the first half of 2018.
The album announcement comes with the release of Nervous Young Inhumans and its accompanying video, which can be seen below. It is a frenetic, anthemic, split-screen choreographed crescendo that perfectly mirrors the album’s theme of duality.
Toledo always knew he would return to ‘Twin Fantasy’. He never did complete the work. Not really. Never could square his grand ambitions against his mechanical limitations. Listen to his first attempt, recorded at nineteen on a cheap laptop, and you’ll hear what Brian Eno fondly calls “the sound of failure” – thrilling, extraordinary, and singularly compelling failure. Will’s first love, rendered in the vivid teenage viscera of stolen gin, bruised shins, and weird sex, was an event too momentous for the medium assigned to record it.
Even so, even awkward and amateurish, ‘Twin Fantasy’ is deeply, truly adored. Legions of reverent listeners carve rituals out of it: sobbing over “Famous Prophets,” making out to “Cute Thing,” dancing their asses off as “Bodys” climbs higher, higher. The distortion hardly matters. You can hear him just fine. You can hear everything. And you can feel everything: his hope, his despair, his wild overjoy. He’s trusting you – plural you, thousands of you – with the things he can’t say out loud. “I pretended I was drunk when I came out to my friends,” he sings – and then, caught between truths, backtracks: “I never came out to my friends. We were all on Skype, and I laughed and changed the subject.”
You might be imagining an extended diary entry, an angsty transmission from a bygone LiveJournal set to power chords and cranked to eleven. You would be wrong. ‘Twin Fantasy’is not a monologue. ‘Twin Fantasy’ is a conversation. “You know,” he sings, “that I’m mostly singing about you.” This is Will’s greatest strength as a songwriter ; he spins his own story, but he’s always telling yours, too. Between nods to local details – Harper’s Ferry, The Yellow Wallpaper, the Monopoly board collecting dust in his back seat – he leaves room for the fragile stuff of your own life, your own loves. From the very beginning, alone in his bedroom, in his last weeks of high school, he knew he was writing anthems. Someday, he hoped, you and I might sing these words back to him.
“It was never a finished work,” Toledo says, “and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.” He has, now, the benefit of a bigger budget, a full band in fine form, and endless time to tinker. According to him, it took eight months of mixing just to get the drums right. But this is no shallow second take, sanitized in studio and scrubbed of feeling. This is the album he always wanted to make. It sounds the way he always wanted it to sound.
It’s been hard, stepping into the shoes of his teenage self, walking back to painful places. There are lyrics he wouldn’t write again, an especially sad song he regards as an albatross. But even as he carries the weight of that younger, wounded Toledo, he moves forward. He grows. He revises, gently, the songs we love so much. In the album’s final moments, in those “apologies to future me’s and you’s,” there is more forgiveness than fury.
This, Toledo says, is the most vital difference between the old and the new: he no longer sees his own story as a tragedy.
For a singer who’s sought privacy in the parking lot of a Target so he could record vocals in the backseat of his car, Will Toledo hasn’t been shy about sharing his work. By age 23, he’d already released a dozen albums. Toledo, who records under the name Car Seat Headrest, is prolific but never conventional. He performed this Tiny Desk Concert mostly solo — with occasional input from his nearby Leesburg, Va., friends and Seattle band mates — for a set that represents only a tiny sliver of what you’ll find on a Car Seat Headrest album. Those records can be filled with rich textures, chaos and harmony, sometimes in the same few minutes. But what you’re about to discover here is a wordsmith with a vision, wrapping his faults and frailties in a DIY sound that’s still finely crafted. Teens Of Style is available now
Set List: “The Drum” “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” “Sober To Death”
Sydney’s Middle Kids are currently one of the most successful musical exports that Australia has produced in recent times. With the group already riding high on a wave of success, they’ve just gone and released a brilliant acoustic cover of Blink-182’s ‘All The Small Things’, the group’s new “sad folk version” of the classic pop-punk anthem comes as part of an upcoming compilation album by online retailing giant Amazon
“We don’t play covers in our live set, but we are interested in the infinite discovery of what makes a ‘great’ song,” the band said. “In this recording, we were attempting to re-imagine a pop-punk classic as a sad country ballad. We kept the beautiful words and the melody, but changed instrumentation to bring out different emotion.”
The group’s cover of the track comes from the new Amazon Acoustics playlist, which is set to drop tomorrow. The playlist also includes a number of other brilliant artists performing acoustic originals and covers, such as Beach Slang, Cody ChesnuTT, Richard Edwards of Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s, and Ruby Empress.
You might also recall the other brilliant covers that Middle Kids have tackled lately, including their astonishing version of Crowded House’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ for triple j’s Like A Version, and their cover of Car Seat Headrest’s ‘Fill In The Blank’ for the SiriusXMU Sessions. .
Middle Kids are a Sydney-based bundle of sheer buzz at the moment, but in our books it’s more than justified. Their debut EP is a lovely piece of work, and hit single ‘Edge Of Town’ bowls us over every time.
Today, they have a new gem for us in the form of a glimmering piano take on ‘Fill In The Blank’ by Car Seat Headrest, performed as part of their live SiriusXMU Sessions recently. The guitar-based original makes it through the translation brilliantly, maybe even ending up as our preferred version as it comes out the other side.
Middle Kids are currently in the middle of a US tour, but they’re set to make their way back onto home shores back in November, Check out Middle Kids’ cover of Blink-182’s ‘All The Small Things’, below.
You may recall that Car Seat Headrest released an alternative mix of “War Is Coming (If You Want It)” as part of Bandcamp’s Transgender Rights Benefit a few weeks back. The official version of the single is now out and main man Will Toledo says simply, “This is a song about not murdering people.” Bandcamp proceeds of this new version will continue to go towards the Transgender Law Center .
Car Seat Headrest, who recently played festivals in Osheaga and Lollapalooza are currently on tour in Europe,
Middle Kids are a Sydney-based bundle of sheer buzz at the moment, but in our books it’s more than justified. Their debut EP is an astounding listen and hit single ‘Edge Of Town’ has been a huge song everywhere and bowls us over every time it pops up in our playlists .
Today, they have a new gem for us in the form of a glimmering piano take on ‘Fill In The Blank’ by Car SeatHeadrest, performed as part of their live Sirius XMU Sessions recently. The guitar-based original makes it through the translation brilliantly, maybe even ending up as our preferred version as it comes out the other side.
Of course, Middle Kids are just paying it forward with this cover, having recently been honoured by Something ForKate frontman Paul Dempsey with beautiful arranged version of their hit single .
For more live gems checkout Middle Kids, they’re heading out on tour with Ryan Adams
The Fat Angel Sings 