Youth has always been a prized commodity in popular music. Whether they’re celebrating it before they lose it or looking back fondly after it’s gone, songwriters hold youth in such high regard that they lose sight of a simple, universal truth: Being young is the worst.
No one understands this better than Will Toledo, the 23-year-old mastermind behind Car Seat Headrest. Toledo has had an exciting trajectory over the past few years, as his bedroom-pop solo project evolved into a full band and signed with indie mainstay Matador Records. After last year’s acclaimed retrospective Teens of Style established CSH as a major force in the indie rock scene, Teens of Denial could have served as a victory lap; now that Toledo has made it to the big leagues, there’s nowhere to go but up.
But Teens of Denial is not a triumphant album. Success has not changed CSH’s songs, some of which have been in the works since 2013; if anything, this record sounds even more defeated than its predecessors. This is a virtue, as it allows Toledo to display his nearly unparalleled knack for humorously articulating the tiny chaos of being lost and bored in your early 20s. “It’s more than what you bargained for / But it’s a little less than what you paid for,” Toledo sings on “Destroyed By Hippie Powers,” a line that serves as the M.O. for the entire album. Confusion and guilt and anger permeate the lyrics, but Toledo imbues them with a wry levity and an offhand smirk that mask their bleak sentiment. Verses play out like shouted arguments between a parent and teen through a recently slammed bedroom door, as on opener “Fill in the Blank” when Toledo yells, “You have no right to be depressed / Haven’t seen enough of this world yet / But it hurts, it hurts, it hurts”.
But more often, that anger is directed inwards, as Toledo details the countless failed schemes and personal flaws that keep him from rising above the banality of his small town. Take “(Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn’t a Problem)”, an exhausted (and exhaustingly titled) ode to our inability to curb our own self-destructive tendencies that features the indelible line “Last Friday I took acid and mushrooms / I did not transcend / I felt like a walking piece of shit in a stupid-looking jacket.” In the world of Car Seat Headrest, even psychedelics are just a different way to feel miserable.
As stunted and ineffective as the narrator comes across, Teens of Denial is CSH’s most sonically mature effort to date. The lo-fi trappings of Toledo’s Bandcamp days have been updated with a professional studio sheen that highlights the lyrics without sacrificing their urgency or impact. The hooks are stronger and more streamlined, with anthemic riffs and harmonies that glow like the sun through your window after you’ve slept til noon. The record hums with a spirit of experimentation, as if Toledo is thrilled to try out the opportunities afforded by a professional studio setting. His oddly affecting falsetto and a beautiful synth arrangement elevate the stellar “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” while the 11-minute epic “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia” crescendos into an existential power ballad as Toledo rattles off a laundry list of lessons he never knew he was supposed to learn before adulthood. The song culminates in a cathartic chorus of “I GIVE UP” screamed over and over again, like an invocation chanted to keep his responsibilities at bay.
His efforts are unsuccessful; by the next song, our hero is back to complaining about how he’ll never get a job. But coming at the end of such an accomplished work, it’s a little hard to believe him. In Teens of Denial, Toledo has created a supremely confident album about crippling self-doubt. The job market may be dire, but at least Toledo has a fallback gig as the reluctant voice of a generation.