Unpopular opinion: Car Seat Headrest's latest album, last March's Making A Door Less Open, is not only not bad, but is actually a worthy successor to Teens of Denial.
A little background: although the album came out over six months ago, that release date was right at the beginning of the covid-19 lockdown pandemic, and concerned with other matters, I overlooked it, playing it once or maybe twice on Spotify and then moving on to other, more-pressing concerns. Only recently have I started re-listening to this album.
More background: After releasing a lot of self-produced music directly to Bandcamp, Will Toledo's big breakthrough as Car Seat Headrest occurred in 2016 with Teens of Denial, his major-label debut. The album became an instant classic, is a great culmination of the previous 10 years of indie rock music, and a towering achievement of that year. The album was adored by critics, popular with fans, and Toledo found himself playing to sold-out venues and major music festivals.
But although to most fans Teens of Denial was the debut of a promising young band (Toledo was only 24 at the time), it was actually the culmination of a decade of his Bandcamp recordings and used every song-writing technique he had learned over the years. It wasn't an opening statement by a new band, it was a Master's thesis by a seasoned songwriter.
Which is all to say that topping that record with the next album was a tough chore. Teens of Denial already represented the very best that young Mr. Toledo could do, it was the summation of everything he knew.
So instead of trying to top it, Toledo next re-recorded an earlier Bandcamp album that he felt was deserving of a wider audience. Twin Fantasy has it moments, but at least to me it had the hallmarks of an ambitious teenager still working on his songcraft. It was only interesting as a historical document of the development of his technique, particularly the way he often grafts two or more songs together into one composition. But the world was still hungry for the next Car Seat Headrest album.
The next album after Twin Fantasy also backed away from the challenge. 2019's Commit Yourself Completely was a fine live album of Car Seat Headrest performing songs from Teens of Denial and Twin Fantasy. It's a fun listen, but we were still waiting to hear what's next.
Toledo finally answered that question with Making A Door Less Open. But instead of a bunch of new Teens of Denial-style, guitar-based rock songs, Door represents a change in sound, with more electronics and more studio technology. Toledo wrote, "The songs contain elements of EDM, hip hop, futurism, doo-wop, soul, and of course rock and roll. But underneath all these things I think these may be folk songs, because they can be played and sung in many different ways, and they're about things that are important to a lot of people: anger with society, sickness, loneliness, [and] love."
The album appears to have poorly received. Pitchfork gave it a measly 6.6 and a condescending review of Toledo's entire career trajectory and personal idiosyncrasies (among other things, he's taken to wearing a gas mask in his videos). Door doesn't seem to have the impact that Teens of Denial had in its day, although it's hard to say how much the inability to tour in this year of the plague had to do with its lukewarm reception.
It's hard not to think of Door's song Martin not as a follow-up to Teen's Vincent, but they are completely different statements. There are horns heard in the bridge and studio tape manipulation toward the end, but there's also a catchy rock song in there, even if the video does consist simply of a masked Toledo washing dishes.
Four years after Teens of Denial, I hear Making a Door not as Teens 2.0 but as a statement from an artist interested in artistic growth and expanding his boundaries. And since that's exactly what Teen of Denial originally was, in that light it's a worthy successor.
Try it, you'll like it.
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