Revisit of the Week: Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Style (2015)
A few months back Car Seat Headrest announced (and digitally released) a partially re-recorded and reshuffled version of their breakthrough album Teens of Denial (2016), to the fandom's collective "but why?" Now that reaction was largely on the back of the rumour mill behind the changes and the general uncertainty on why this album needed any re-recording to begin with, and it wasn't because of the mere idea of the group going back to retouch old favourites. After all, that's just part of what Will Toledo's gang does as an established routine now, from re-imagining the holiest of their cows when Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) (2018) came about and turned the loftily dreaming self-release into the bombastic epic it always aspired to be, to today's subject. Teens of Style started Car Seat Headrest's life under an actual record label, and as their first album under the new spotlight it made perfect sense to pick a bunch of their favourites from Toledo's Bandcamp days and present that reader's digest selection as their "official" debut collection of songs - why waste some good songs that only a fraction of the new audience would otherwise ever bother to hear?
Teens of Style is a humble release and I'd like to think it's intentionally that way. Despite now having access to a proper studio space in label money, the sound is kept relatively lo-fi: lots of scruff around the edges, lots of fuzz obscuring Toledo's voice, lots of noise and chaos surrounding the melodies. Not too much, but it's enough to pay direct homage to the familiar sound of the Bandcamp demos that brought all the buzz around Toledo's name (and to reassure all existing fans that this is still the CSH you know and love). The new recording environment is mainly heard in a couple of additional instruments thrown in like live horns and, well, just in the live instruments in general. It'd take a little bit longer still for Car Seat Headrest to officially re-brand themselves as a band rather than Toledo's solo project, but Teens of Style already introduces a stable rhythm section behind Toledo and it immediately shifts the nature of the sound from something intimate and (intentionally) messy to something more widescreen, more communal explosion of volume. They've all done gone grown up.
I betray my indie cool (and my indie furry cool, too) by not having even heard of Car Seat Headrest before Teens of Denial, but when I fell for that album hard I immediately worked my way backwards. Teens of Style is destined to be a mere footnote in the band's legacy because in hindsight it's obviously more of a practice round than a real stab at elevating CSH as a project, but in that initial wave of adoration I hammered it so, so much. Both Teens albums were constantly in rotation and while both are built around the same recipe of young men hitting their instruments with heavy volume and creating beautiful noise around Toledo's emotive bellowing, Style's unique selling point was its snappiness - a cosy 46 mins compared to the 80-minute epoch of Denial. The songs themselves are breezier too: neat 3-4 minute pop songs disguised in lo-fi riffs and too-cool-to-care indie rock clothing. The album strives to create a sonic atmosphere where it feels like you're watching the band play from across the room, and it successfully replicates the sheer excitement, thrill and energy that a close-knit rock and roll experience like that can bring. It's a now-atypically direct album for CSH but I also think it hits right into the core of why their music is so great, even if you strip away all the grand ambitions or set dressings around Toledo's undeniable skill in melodies. Now I love those grand ambitions and set dressings, they are my jam, but sometimes it's good to be reminded of the basics too.
Every time Teens of Style is on, I'm reminded of just how good those basics are. This and Denial introduced one of the most vital voices in indie rock to the wider masses (including myself) and whilst Denial is the better album, I do find that Style gets unfairly hidden under its shadow. There are so many great songs here, and especially "Strangers" I'd still rank as one of my very favourites of theirs.
Car seat's nervous and the lights are bright
When I was a kid I fell in love with Michael Stipe
I took lyrics out of context and thought
"He must be speaking to me"
Me too, Will. Me too.
Revisit of the Week is going to take a few weeks break as I'm off travelling a whole bunch. Will probably resume around mid-July.
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