#248 — Car Seat Headrest — Teens of Denial (2016)
Indie rock will never die
Three in, and we’re at an artist I have never heard of in my life. Checking in at 1hr and 10 minutes, it’s the longest album so far. It’s also probably the most stereotypical ‘what I expect when Rolling Stone makes a list’ album.
This is guitar driven indie rock, and given its year of release, you can quickly draw up a family tree of influences, and appreciate that Car Seat Headrest don’t so much lean into them as meld and become one.
The Strokes, The Pixies, Velvet Underground, The Libertines, At The Drive-In, The Hives, Fugazi, fucking Weezer (?!) the Afghan Whigs and even some Half Man Half Biscuit are all in here somewhere, but it never feels like a rip-off — there’s a clear love for the art form, and of forming the art.
This feels like another concept album and boy is the protagonist having an average, uncertain, angst-ridden experience of life in a town that’s halfway between here and nowhere.
Destroyed By Hippie Powers and (Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn’t a Problem) — the last one a masterclass in song-titling for this genre — both hit that nostalgia for anyone who’s in their late-teens and bubbling with uncertainty and hallucinogens when suddenly everything goes wrong and you’re leaving and trying to put yourself back together again but you can’t because you’ve lost your sense of self to be able to find the pieces.
This is as an album of loathing, but thoroughly confident in how it tell you it loathes life, how being stuck in a place and stuck in being yourself can consume you. There’s a real heart to this album, and it’s beating fast as fuck because it’s having a panic attack.
It’s a single piece, but the back end of the album has The Ballad of the Costa Concordia an 11 and a half minute three or four phase of realisations which has some licensed lyrics from an unexpected song. Wait until you get there, it’s worth it.
Car Seat Headrest — Teens Of Denial — 2016
Best Track: Vincent. Love a track that clocks in at 7 minutes 45 and the vocals don’t kick in for 2 and a half minutes. An urgent introduction.
Underrated Banger: 1937 State Park. Old mate is having a straight up bad time, meditating on death and getting stopped by the cops.
This one’s not on Youtube, but you can buy it at Bandcamp if you do like what you hear on Spotify: https://carseatheadrest.bandcamp.com/album/teens-of-denial
