Matador

The first studio album from Car Seat Headrest in five years, ‘The Scholars.’

From Shakespeare to Mozart to classical opera, Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo pulled from the classics when devising the lyrics and story arc of ‘The Scholars,’ while the music draws, carefully, from classic rock story song cycles such as The Who’s ‘Tommy’ and David Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust.’ “One thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot,” Toledo notes. “I didn’t want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it’s like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance.”

While Car Seat Headrest started as Toledo’s solo project, the four-piece is now fully a band. “What we’ve been doing more of in recent years is just taking the pulses of each other.” says Toledo. “It didn’t really feel to me like things got in sync in an inner feeling way until this record, with that internal communal energy. And it’s become that band feeling for me in a much more realized way. That’s been a big journey.”

It is a journey that listeners will want to embark on again and again as they absorb and discover the rich depths and clanging resonances of ‘The Scholars.’

“Making ‘The Scholars’ was a five-year process of experiments, jams, and demos as we found our way towards a final product. “Early Hack” is what someone would have gotten if they had hacked my computer a year before the album was complete. There are some nearly-complete songs that were abandoned, some ideas that were reconfigured into new forms, and some material made just for the fun of it. This behind-the-scenes look gives you a larger sense of what went into these songs.”

The deluxe black 2LP edition includes a 28-page booklet with illustrations and lyrics - plus a bonus CD featuring 19 unheard demos, jams and outtakes. Each copy numbered with stamped gold foil.