Will Toledo always knew he would return to Twin Fantasy. He never did complete the work. Not really. Never could square his grand ambitions against his mechanical limitations. Listen to his first attempt, recorded at nineteen on a cheap laptop, and you’ll hear what Brian Eno fondly calls “the sound of failure” - thrilling, extraordinary, and singularly compelling failure. Will’s first love, rendered in the vivid teenage viscera of stolen gin, bruised shins, and weird sex, was an event too momentous for the medium assigned to record it.
On February 16th, on the heels of the smashing success of Teens of Denial, Car Seat Headrest will release a new version of Twin Fantasy. “It was never a finished work,” Will says, “and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.” He has, now, the benefit of a bigger budget, a full band in fine form, and endless time to tinker. According to him, it took eight months of mixing just to get the drums right. But this is no shallow second take, sanitized in studio and scrubbed of feeling. This is the album he always wanted to make. It sounds the way he always wanted it to sound.
It’s been hard, stepping into the shoes of his teenage self, walking back to painful places. There are lyrics he wouldn’t write again, an especially sad song he regards as an albatross. But even as he carries the weight of that younger, wounded Will, he moves forward. He grows. He revises, gently, the songs we love so much. In the album’s final moments, in those apologies to future me’s and you’s, there is more forgiveness than fury.
This, Will says, is the most vital difference between the old and the new: he no longer sees his own story as a tragedy.
credits
released February 16, 2018
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE BLEEDING HEARTS & THE ARTISTS: billis helg, cate wurtz, david bowie, david lynch, frank ocean, gray folie, jandek, johns linnell & flansburgh, maurice whiting, remy boydell, sour gummy, and many more
CAR SEAT HEADREST is will toledo, seth dalby (bass), ethan ives (guitar), andrew katz (drums)
also heard:
adam stilson - various sounds
amanda schiano di cola - trumpet on famous prophets
jeff walker - trombone on famous prophets
degnan smith - possibly some acoustic guitars on sober to death
featuring:
will toledo as the nonbeliever
andrew katz as 1traitdanger
hojin "stella" jung as the artist
reesa mallen as margot
Cute Thing contains elements of “Ana Ng” (J. Linnell/J. Flansburgh) TMBG Music (BMI). All rights administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI). All rights reserved.
produced by will toledo
engineered by adam stilson
mixed by will & adam
mastered by jason ward, Chicago Mastering Service
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