Will Toledo has never been at a loss for words. As a band that regularly flirts with the seven-minute mark — and often pushes past ten — Car Seat Headrest (and their frontman) can hardly be described as bereft. 2011’s Twin Fantasy, an album so quintessentially Car Seat Headrest that its album art became the band’s unofficial mascot, has not one, but two songs that tower over this 10-minute mark. In fact, the remainder of the album’s songs creep past five minutes, save for a track or two. The Scholars is certainly no exception to this verbosity; the nine-track album clocks in at an extensive runtime of an hour and 10 minutes. Car Seat Headrest uses this duration to craft a dense, theatrical rock opera with instrumentals and narratives coated in a shimmery sheen of cosmic radiation and an unshakable layer of campus library dust.
The runtime of The Scholars is seemingly the only commonality between this album and the remainder of Car Seat Headrest’s catalog. Indeed, there are layers of novelty inherent to the album. Most obviously woven into The Scholars’ rock opera infrastructure is its fictional narrative. The story of the album is a meandering web between an eight-person cast at the fictional Parnassus University, as well as the nearby Clown College.
The narrative is enigmatic, revealed largely through cryptic lyricism and notes accompanying the physical CD. There are sonic differences too — Car Seat Headrest tinkers with David Bowie-esque progressive rock. Will Toledo steps back, sharing in an interview with Rolling Stone that he served as more of a kind of organizer than a composer this time around. The result is a much more varied, colorful soundscape, with a newfound revolving door of vocalists and jazzy guitar flourishes where there might have previously been a power chord. This is Car Seat Headrest operating at their most ambitious, continuing to push their creativity 12 albums later.
The best moments on the album capitalize on a controlled variant of the band’s restless creative momentum. “Reality,” featuring lead vocals from guitarist Ethan Ives, is the sprawling story of The Chanticleer’s (an orange cat pictured on various album artworks) alleged early death, revealed through enigmatic lyricism, the libretto and a Car Seat Headrest WebQuest. The Chanticleer is the drummer for a band of Clown College students. He also appears to serve as a pseudo-narrator. The aforementioned libretto, an accompaniment for the project, states “The Chanticleer, apparently the victim of madness or an early death, has vanished from the environs.” “Reality” intertwines the narratives of The Chanticleer in the afterlife and the aftermath of his passing.
Ives’ vocals, while not as technically strong as Toledo’s, are deeply powerful within the framework of “Reality.” The imperfections texture the state of mourning The Scholars aims to capture. The result is a sweeping space ballad where Ives takes on a ’70s-esque flair. “Reality’”s buzzing riffs are reminiscent of a rocket ship barreling into space while Ives’ character dreams of being taken away on a starship. The first segments of the nearly 20-minute song “Planet Desperation” are a similarly powerful emotive blast from the past.
Unfortunately, Car Seat Headrest is its own worst enemy on The Scholars, losing momentum in the same density that colors the work. While the album holds several promising and moving moments, the narrative is much too convoluted to truly be impactful and emotionally effective. In track order, we follow Beloco and his apparent connection to the Scop, Devereaux’s struggles with his sexuality and his time at Clown College, Malory’s return home after a year of no contact with his parents, a band of clowns led by the mysterious Chanticleer and the return of Beloco and his discussions with a professor. Then, we follow Rosa’s captivity at the hands of dark forces beneath Clown College, The Chanticleer’s alleged death, Parnassus’ dean’s poisoning and demise at the hands of Clown College and finally, the revelation that The Chanticleer faked his death. And despite a lengthy runtime, listeners still spend far too little time with a single character to develop an attachment to them. The cast is spread thin, each character left to scrounge for Dungeons & Dragons-infused scraps.
This lack of focused emotional weight sinks The Scholars. At any given moment, there are multiple characters, themes and instruments fighting for airtime, with nothing surfacing as victorious. It’s claustrophobic. Car Seat Headrest is both fighting and losing a battle with the indie darling reputation they’ve built for themselves over the years. A redirection to this extent will indubitably be bogged down by Twin Fantasy loyalists expecting a third rerecording of 2011’s cult classic; Car Seat Headrest are victims of their own overly impressive repertoire. Still, while The Scholars flounders, it never drowns. Expanding from the Will Toledo one-man show to a collective Car Seat Headrest results in growing pains, but it also gives the band newfound wings. The Scholars flies away and winds up tangled among stars in a dark academia galaxy far from home. Car Seat Headrest shoots for the moon, but the stars aren’t such a bad resting place.
Daily Arts Writer Amaya Choudhury can be reached at amayach@umich.edu.
