Car Seat Headrest--Teens of Denial

i don't really see much musical ambition as maybe this dude never played shows much before he wrote so he never got to see what it looked like when ppl started going to get beer or take a piss during the boring stuff?

agreed w/alfred wrt parquet courts, feels like ppl just are throwing 2 names together

Dave

It's a good record... if you enjoy the genre? I'll add that it's an even better story, perhaps the hype is music journalists zeroing in the story more than the actual record? Seems to be a common trope with publications that covers indie music. I haven't read a single year end list that doesn't mention CSR's bandcamp origins. As it has been said above, the genre produced better albums this year and not receiving half of the year end coverage CSH is getting. (My Woman is my prime example).

Going through as many Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reviews as I could when I got obsessed with the record in 2009, I realized most 'indie music' publications could write about is the label war that birthed the record and the music itself was pretty secondary.

bandcamp artist makes good, fucking fairytale of 2016 right there. i stand with the bandcamp artists who will never make it *folds arms*

Neverban Dave Jagger

The record is ok if forgettable (the tapes n tapes comparison is actually pretty otm). It's the hype that annoys me, like everyone is pretending this record is actually one of the best records this year when it's so average. If I read one of those reviews and listen to it I'd go "huh? THIS is the best rock album of the year!? What a shit year for rock it must've been then". I know I shouldn't care what everyone wants to listen to but I feel they're inflating the importance of this record and band. by the next record (two record tops) the same people that are so passionate about the band this year will elicit the same meh I'm getting from them. Mark my words.

don't think the Angel Olsen album is the best example since it was deservingly better reviewed and is getting more EOY list placements etc.

is it? I was under the impression CSH is getting way more attention, my bad.

feels to me like csh is getting more run too

by the next record (two record tops) the same people that are so passionate about the band this year will elicit the same meh I'm getting from them. Mark my words.

― Moka, Thursday, December 8, 2016 1:50 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is sadly otm but could also be said about p much 90% of the bands whose names appear in mid-sized font on any 2016 festival bill you can name

Tobias Jesso Jr, anyone?

whom

Angel Olsen >>> Car Seat Headrest. Is anyone questioning that? CSH is good in a different way -- they're more of a minor act

You wont hear it from me. The Angel Olsen is good... not the sort of record I play usually but I can see its replay value over the years whereas CSH will inevitably get replaced by 2017's best new indie darling.

Yeah they are in totally different categories. Watching high school basketball games is fun but it's not the nba

That said the people viciously criticizing car seat headrest are heartless monsters

Tobias Jesso Jr will possibly end up as an industry songwriter - he's written stuff with Sia, Adele and John Legend already

Like the Semisonic dude

and Desmond Child

Lucy Dacus is sort of an indie-folk PJ Harvey, which I guess is a bit more original than Car Seat's 80s and 90s retro rock, although sometimes he's more catchy than her despite being derivative

there's no reason the intro to Vincent had to be 2 minutes

but it's the best part of the song :P

how is it possible no one has mentioned toledo has listened to much modern lovers way too much

One band not mentioned as an influence (possibly because they weren't on Matador) is Archers of Loaf, and his vocals sometimes sound like Bachman in subdued mode, as do some of the more anthemic bits of the better songs. I like a few tracks on this a lot, think he'd be better with a better band but that might be coming, and don't see any reason to dislike him for not being more than he is.

This squonk wishes he was half as good as Archers of Loaf

half would be generous

I love AoL, but really don't see the need to run this guy down. He's put out a pretty good throwback indie rock album in 2016. Of all the people to criticize, he seems pretty low on the list. It's a catchy album, decent band, decent recordings, and Butterglory got an awful lot of press back in the day. (And I still like them ok as well). Just seems silly for this band, of all bands, to have a backlash at all.

Wait ... what does Butterglory have to do with this? I'm missing something.

can we run down people whose idea of rock is so narrow that this is the album that determines how good of a year it was for it

like with a car?

throw car seat headrests at them

i don't think this is necessarily "more of the same" indie nonsense, it's clearly got some sense of ambition, i just think that ambition actively detracts from the songcraft, which is merely ok

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Thursday, December 8, 2016 5:11 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is doubly true of the twin fantasy remake that just came out

it's so so bloated! the original was long enough at an hour and then he added another 11 minutes onto it

Only on my first listen but I can't tell if this record is amazing or an overindulgent mess. There are great moments in it and I like its "this-record-will-save-your-teenage-self"'s level of ambition, but aahhhh I just wish he'd write a strong, simple hook - something that so many other bands can do with songs that aren't 12 minutes long. It's a good record and I understand it's appeal, but it's emotional weight doesn't always translate into greatness. Also that "I am a good person" monologue is cringeworthy as hell

someone should edit his stuff down and put it on Bandcamp like that one dude did with JT's 20/20 Experience

i...quite like this

whyyy

like, much more than TOD which imo wasn't very good

super into twin fantasy, "Body's" in particular.

Skimming thru this thread, I'm surprised at the reactions to "ToD"... I thought that album was absolutely terrific -- big, ambitious, funny, anthemic, audacious, self-effacing; great/quotable lyrics ("I felt like a walking piece of shit / In a stupid-looking jacket"; "The effects are so good these days / If there were gears behind those big brown eyes, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference"); hot production, super rockin', "1937 State Park" blasting at full volume; really "going for it," not afraid to be corny or "mainstream"; communicating "big ideas" through crowd-pleasing rock 'n roll in a way that very popular rock artists did in decades past but seems to have fallen out of favor recently (...I'm aware I may be setting myself up with that last one).

The fact that it sounds "like '90s indie rock" seemed incidental to how great it was -- though I admit that I love '90s indie rock, and that very well may have helped!

I also dug the "Twin Fantasy" redo, but have only listened to it a few times....

That chorus on '1937 State Park' pulls off the very rare vulnerable/anthemic and blows me away every time.

that's the one song i like off tod, i appreciate the inward digging his stuff aims for but that track besides it feels mostly like inward trudging

is there a new album

Another lyric I love:

I’ve been waiting all my life
I’ve been waiting for some real good porn
Something with meaning, something fulfilling
I’d like to make my shame count for something

I feel like there’s something (half-)ironic, or subtly tongue-in-cheek, about the pathos on this album — a gentle, straight-faced mocking of his own drama — which elevates the proceedings, and is part of why the lyrics are so great. I guess Lou Barlow presents a rough precedent for this kind of “dry self-awareness about the singer’s own melodrama.”

By contrast, the lyrics of Twin Fantasy are more straight-up emo (Will was actually a teen when he wrote them, no?) — but still very good!

(One thing to add is that I’m not usually much of a “lyrics guy” — but Will Headrest’s lyrics are so good, I find myself really aware of & focusing on them.)

there's an eye for detail that reminds me a lot of Courtney Barnett actually.
In the 'I did not transcend, I felt like a walking piece of shit in a stupid looking jacket' the jacket lyric so perfectly captures the feeling of alienation.

...and she’s my other current rock fave!!

The "new" one is a great record, IMO... it and the new Parquet Courts have been enough to scratch any "indie rock" itches this year.

while this is good, what you just wrote is hideously incurious and lazy

also fuck parquet courts

Yeah, but I don't give a fuck what you think.

you're such a dull cunt