Car Seat Headrest - The Scholars
“You can love again, if you try again”.
After a two-year break following their previous record, Faces From The Masquerade, Virginia indie-rock quartet Car Seat Headrest return with The Scholars - their most ambitious project to date. The nine-track LP clocks in at an hour and ten minutes, and showcases all of the band’s best traits to the fullest degree.
The first half of the album feels like something of an introductory dance, a winding path leading you into the story of this spiritual rock opera. This way, once you reach the three-track run of “Gethsemane”, “Reality” and “Planet Desperation”, which total just over forty minutes in length, you’re already engrossed in the world and the story to a sufficient extent for them to connect properly. It’s easy to be apprehensive with tracks that extensive, but Car Seat Headrest do brilliantly to make each one feel like an enthralling journey because of the structural choices, ups and downs in tempo, tension and intensity, and varied vocals.
The strongest quality of this album is the instrumental side. The sound of the album is fittingly expansive and diverse, painting vivid pictures even just with the music alone. The production, handled by the band’s frontman Will Toledo, is fantastic, with every track feeling like its own distinct world, while also not losing any cohesion with the album as a whole. The tones of the instruments are perfect, with the guitars in particular sounding extremely crisp. Toledo’s vocals on the project vary tastefully from laid back and calm to energetic and punchy, with each iteration fitting right in with the context of each track. The vocal harmonies are also very well-executed.
One slight drawback, which takes away marginally from the immersion, is that, due to the nature of the vocals, and the sheer volume of the instrumentals in some cases, the lyrics become slightly more difficult to make out in a few passages; however, even when this does happen, it doesn’t break the experience, as the music does enough to keep you engaged and invested regardless. These passages are also not particularly common on the record; most of the time, Will Toledo’s excellent songwriting connects just as intended. The imagery that is used on The Scholars is elevated and enigmatic at times, crafting a vivid picture, but letting the listener draw their own conclusions on certain elements of the world and its story. Each character is fleshed out just enough to make them clear entities in the narrative, while still maintaining a degree of intrigue and mystery. The writing is intricate and intentional, but just to the right degree to not feel like it’s trying too hard.
Overall, The Scholars is a breathtaking display of musical prowess. It’s a very bold step forward for Car Seat Headrest, but one in which they don’t falter in the slightest. It measures out its ambition very tastefully, refining every last detail to perfection, and leaving the listener wanting to revisit it again and again.
9.0/10
