by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
The prolific Will Toledo and Car Seat Headrest have returned but not in the guise one would have envisioned. Once again backed by the might of Matador Records (one of the strongest band-and-label pairings in recent years), the indie icon has now taken his studious approach to electronica on the band’s 12th album. For this isn’t solely a Car Seat Headrest record, as Toledo has tried to make crucially clear: rather it’s a collaboration with the bizarre 1TraitDanger, an electronic side project started by Toledo and his drummer Andrew Katz. It’s based around Toledo’s alter-ego Trait, a Deadmau5-esque gas-mask-wearing character and the result on this album is a clashing of concepts, but one that they’re able to pull off; it embraces the new dance and electronic elements while maintaining their sharp and introspective lyricism. Making A Door Less Open will alienate some of the band’s more casual listeners - those that first discovered them during the wildfire acclaim of the Teens of Denial era - but Toledo has never been the sort of artist who would care anyway.
This is less an album than an experimental collection of individual pieces. Each song sounds different, forged with their own intrinsic identity, and the incohesion allows for richer discovery of each one’s composition. The opening song, “Weightlifters,” is such a power move, an immediate proclamation that Toledo intends to forge new paths with this album, its darkly meditative synths bringing us into the new world of Car Seat Headrest. There are flirtations with aggressive EDM on “Hymn,” the interjection of Toledo’s recognizable voice the only thing separating it from being a typical festival sound. “Famous” and “Deadlines (Thoughtful),” meanwhile, lie under a glossy layer of modern electro-pop. “What’s With You Lately” is the only song that truly sounds like the Toledo of old, an acoustic, downtempo 90s ballad that cuts through the electronic glean like a knife.
Toledo’s sardonic and winning lyricism remains, thankfully. As always with him, it’s a complex challenge separating the real from the pretend. Take “Hollywood”: he screams “Hollywood makes me wanna puke!” during a song all about the depressing nature of the world of Hollywood but this is heavily-mined territory and he sounds bored when saying the banalities. Is he truly attacking Hollywood and its elitism or is the mockery actually aimed at those who cry this cliche as if finding new biting words? Toledo has a gift for the elusive. The songwriting explores both lightness and darkness, despair and hopefulness. As you watch the video for the single “Martin,” Toledo sporting his gas mask and yellow latex gloves cleaning dishes in an apartment, his gift for finding the surreal within the mundane is again obvious (or less surreal as it could be, in a post-coronavirus world).
It’s fascinating watching Toledo bring this esoteric side project to the forefront, aligning what was once almost a gimmick into an intentional mode of output. Toledo has essentially been a poster boy for indie rock ever since his emergence in the last decade, a witty heir to Stephen Malkmus, and his indulgence of the prevalent pop and electronic sounds of the musical zeitgeist is noteworthy; Toledo was always too talented and inquisitive to remain rooted in his lo-fi ways however. There’s also a comparison to be made with Julian Casablancas, founding The Voidz to satiate his more experimental tendencies away from The Strokes.
Car Seat Headrest had always sounded like a band marked by weariness and exhaustion, particularly as their fame grew, so this feels like a correction, a re-steering, Toledo fully stepping away from the acclaim that followed their indie rock output. Even the album’s title teases us with a knowing nod and a wink, in his usual fashion. For with this record, Toledo has made the door less open; he’s pushed it wider, allowing Car Seat Headrest to explore their sound further and further.