If Car Seat Headrest were a car seat headrest, they would no longer fit in a Toyota Prius. A solo project of singer/songwriter Will Toledo in the early years of this decade, Headrest is now a touring juggernaut, with seven members. Blistering sets at the Showbox over the weekend show Headrest now belongs in a Hummer … and is probably poised for a larger audience too.
Toledo, an introspective mopester, manages to craft anthems out of confessional, muttering self-loathing. It helps when he’s got a sonic assault behind him that includes two drummers and two to three guitarists. When Headrest launched into “Fill in the Blank” Saturday in front of packed house, at least half the crowd was singing along.
“I’m so sick of (fill in the blank)
Accomplish more, accomplish nothing
If I were split in two, I would just take my fists
So I could beat up the rest of me.”
By the time he got to the chorus – “You have no right to be depressed!” – and the electric guitar frenzy was on, well … we didn’t have much right to be depressed.
Car Seat Headrest was fairly new to me when I decided to go to the show. I’d heard “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” on a mixed CD and it caught my attention. It’s perhaps a deceptive introduction to the band. From the 2016 Teens of Denial, the song features synthesizer and delicate strummings, with a falsetto lead-in from Toledo.
Headrest has actually forged a growing cult following with a punkier, chunkier sound, which balances Toledo’s self-absorbed musings expressed in a lazy bass-baritone. After putting out a series of self-released records while living in Virginia, Toledo moved to the Seattle area in 2015, signed with Matador Records and promptly recruited a guitarist, drummer and bassist.
Since then, Headrest has released Teens of Style, Teens of Denial and this year Twin Fantasy (Face to Face). The last album is actually a retooling of a 2011 record Toledo had made while still in college. Although I’ve never heard the original “Fantasy,” the new one is a good listen, with some layered production to counter the fuzz guitar.
If “just add noise” is the recipe for making Car Seat Headrest more accessible, then Toledo has embraced that directive. In 2016, Headrest invited the entire lineup of Naked Giants, a Seattle trio they often shared the bill with, to join them on stage for their sets.
Since then, Toledo has left his guitar backstage so that he can sing and dance in an ungainly, shoegazer kind of way in front of a wall of sound. Gangly, with a mop of hair and heavy-framed glasses, Toledo looked a bit Joey Ramone with sweatpants on Saturday. The happy crowd shouted their adulation and swayed against the barricade in front of the stage.
Headrest played several songs from the last three albums, including a hypnotic “Killer Whales.” They segued their popular “Sober to Death” into a stirring cover of Neil Young’s “Powderfinger,” with guitarist Ethan Ives supplying the gritty lead vocal. For the encore, they delivered a convincing rendition of OutKast’s “Hey Ya.”
The Showbox shows were a fine finale to the band’s summer tour in the states. They now launch to Europe for bunch of dates there. Is there a tour bus big enough?
