Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo re-imagines the band’s breakout on Teen of Denial: Joe’s Story. On the original record, Toledo used the name “Joe” as a stand-in for himself. Revisiting Teens in the run-up to its 10th year, he felt compelled to give Joe a backstory and began tweaking the album to tell that tale. “The resulting work feels more like the album Teens of Denial was meant to be,” Will Toledo writes in a new message to fans. “When you’re writing from a dark space, it’s hard to have perspective on where you’re at. This time, I could pull from memories of that darkness, and use the distance and additional perspective of ten years of life to shed a fuller light on the experience. Joe is a character going through some of what I experienced, and some of his own problems.” Early this year, the group returned to the studio with producer Steve Fisk to update accordingly –tweaking lyrics and recording new tunes in the “Denial-style,” including the optimistic and anthemic “Joe Drives Again.” The result retains Teens’s dark edge and youthful cynicism, but promises a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Toledo writes, “I’m so grateful that this is a work that people have kept coming to, and I hope that this presentation does them honor with a fresh offering to the conversation. We’ve known that “it doesn’t have to be like this”; now we can wonder – “‘what it if were like this?’”
Available as a gatefold 2xLP / CD with new artwork on October 16th