Car Seat Headrest

Inspired by an apocryphal poem by "Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo," and featuring character designs from Toledo’s friend, the cartoonist Cate Wurtz, the album Car Seat Headrest’s bold new rock opera The Scholars focuses on the yearning and spiritual crisis of the titular characters. They range from the doubt-filled playwright Beolco to Devereaux, a person born to religious conservatives who finds themselves desperate for higher guidance. Meanwhile, the music draws, carefully, from classic rock story song cycles such as The Who’s Tommy and David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Self-produced by Toledo, the band have never sounded more fully realized or assured of themselves. And while Car Seat Headrest started as Toledo's solo project, it is now fully a band. “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,” he explains. “That's been a big journey.”