Car Seat Headrest
Twin Fantasy

I believe it is always difficult to confront the ghosts of one's past. A breakup destabilizes not only the world around you but especially the world inside your body: from the head to the stomach, from the legs to the heart. Will Toledo (aka Car Seat Headrest) is homosexual; in 2011, at 19 years old, he was left by his boyfriend. He already had a unique sensitivity and a crystalline talent. Toledo brings with him the greatest American Alternative and Lo-Fi comedy (Pixies, Pavement, Built To Spill), watering it with tragedy—not grotesque at all, but soft and light as velvet passing over smooth and soft skin, with a few words spoken with all the feeling the universe can give.

Will has the makings of a Rockstar. NO. Will is a Rockstar, through and through. I believe that in a couple of decades, he can easily be compared to Pollard, Black, or even Bowie, without exaggeration. Will has the songs: if you listen to My Boy or Nervous Young Inhumans, they are two tracks that anyone would want to have in their discography; perfectly crafted hooks, considering they are created by a guy who has yet to turn 20. In Will's mind, there is the ability to make 10-minute suites (Beach Life-In-Death, Famous Prophets) while staying within that indie pop/rock that doesn’t lend much space to long durations.
Electronic drums, guitar under layers of dust, an Eric's Trip approach from a seasoned songwriter and/or orchestra director, venial punk, and chamber arena rock—all live and rotate in melodies we've heard before but that succeed in giving us a very refreshing shower under the heat of a scorching summer.

And Then...?

February 2018.
Matador releases Twin Fantasy, where Will Toledo, after 7 years, re-interprets, re-records, re-imagines his adolescent album. The perfect one.
The supporting band and experiences with Teens Of Style and Teens Of Denial have matured the sound of Car Seat Headrest, the songs have a radio-friendly sound but are not naively pop. They aren't flashy, the core audience doesn't waver, doesn’t turn away, they appreciate it.
Drunk Drivers, The Ballad Of Costa Concordia, Something Soon are among the most beautiful songs of the decade (sub)jectively. Similarly, My Boy, Nervous Young Inhumans, Sober To Death, Stop Smoking, Beach Life-In-Death, all become dynamic and great tracks, Twin Fantasy is a genuine album.

I was thinking about what to write in the review, and an image came to mind that I had wanted to forget, but which over the years has become just a blurry, completely indifferent image, even though it remains incomprehensible: I was 13, or maybe 12, I was in Croatia with my parents and a couple of their friends and their daughter. We stayed on the first floor of a house owned by a Croatian family, who had a daughter about 8-9 years old. On the last day of the holiday, I was in a swimsuit and bathrobe, sitting on a chair in their garden, alone. At some point, the Croatian daughter came over, I greeted her, she sat on my lap and I didn’t think much of it. Then she put her hand on my crotch, that hand stayed there for about 2-3 seconds, she was around 8-9 years old, I think. I jumped up and went inside, I had an erection. For years I asked myself if I was a pedophile; it was a child who put her hand on my crotch, I was scared. Over time the memory faded, and the thought of pedophilia with it, but that situation always gave me a slight disgust, a slight mental digression. I think about it now.

Time heals, Will's wound has healed, and he has definitively defeated his nightmares in this way by reworking an hour of music he wrote during a difficult time in his life, to abandon it, to leave it behind.
This is to say that the Twin Fantasy of 2011 is like that little girl who by 2018 has certainly become a woman; and if you're wondering, if I saw that girl, today, now 24 years old, I’d sleep with her.