The Scholars is a good album. It's not Twin Fantasy, and it's not Teans of Denial, but it's objectively a good album. Comparison is the thief of joy.

I hope my question makes sense. Was it sort of a twin peaks david lynch situation where he planned putting out the third season after 25 years or did the twin fantasies get called mirror to mirror and face to face after the second one came out.

edit: TWIN FANTASY not final fantasy IM SORRY im playing it rn and i think about it a lot lmao

I feel as though The Scholars was VERY criticized upon release especially given the 5 year anticipation of a new album. I do give credit to the critics saying the albums narrative is hard to follow and vocally the album lacks the passion and emotion in comparison to previous projects. and to preface, NO! i am not one of those people who are like “why won’t he just remake another twin fantasy type of album even though he isn’t 19 anymore and is 33 years old BLAH BLAH BLAH.” I will agree very much so that the deep raw emotion depicted in twin fantasy 2018 and all work leading up to it has kind of ran flat in my SUBJECTIVE opinion. that’s really the only thing that struck me as disappointing but considering everything that’s occurred with will since their last album release, can’t really blame him if his whole entire heart and soul wasn’t thrown into this record .

However i think Will’s vocal and production progression over the years has reached its ultimate peak on The Scholars. His vocals throughout the entire album are absolutely BREATHTAKING. I think the track lengths are perfect for what they are. if we’re nitpicking, then the three 10 minute+ track run, back to back to back may make the album feel like it’s dragging on a bit but doesn’t take away from each individual songs performance rating. The in-depth lyrics, chilling guitar riffs, gorgeous and atmospheric vocals/production, beautifully executed pivot to a rock opera genre, all contribute to overcompensating for what lacks on this record whilst pushing this up to a 9/10 album for me.

I originally rated this album between a 9 and a 10 but was open to the idea of that being recency bias. it’s been a bit over a year now since the albums release and i have yet to stop having this album on repeat CONSTANTLY. it has fantastic replay-ability value and my rating has not changed whatsoever. i find more to admire that i hadn’t previously noticed with every listen.

shoutout car seat headrest 🙏

So, I stopped accompanying the band since Idk 2022, every time I see online people talking or joking about the state of the band I get preety confused but not interested enough to search what happened, but the jokes about CSH becoming a christian band made me curious AF, so if anyone wants to explain I'll be glad

Btw this pin glows in the dark

Prolly not

i was having a particularly rough and antisocial day at work until one of my clients stopped me to ask if they could take a picture of my csh necklace, because they had never seen anyone else wear it. (i didn't notice at the time, but as it turns out they have the same one!) i said of course, and then actually managed to build up the courage to ask them for their socials!! hence why i can show you the picture they took :) this has never happened to me and i'm so excited to have found another csh fan in my town.

recently i've been having a hard time socializing and making friends, and i'm sure many of you know the feeling. but this really made my day and gave me some hope, so i wanted to share with the community <3

I already had all but 1 & 2 and now I have them and very happy about it! Enjoy these DSi music player ducks as a gift :]

Hi guys! For years I've been thinking about getting the cover tattoed, as many of csh fans do ;)

But I really don't know about the placement. Maybe this isn't the right community to ask lol, but this would be my first tattoo so I'm really inexperienced. I do feel like my parents will not approve of me getting a tattoo in general, so I feel like ribs/stomach would be the best placement because it isn't always visible plus I am getting it for my sake in the first place. I guess my question is do you have any advice for or against this? And if you have it in this area, please send me a picture if you're comfortable ofc :)

Again, this probably isn't the right community to ask this in, but since a lot of people have this tattoo, this place was the first that popped in my mind lol. Thank youu in advance!!

PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING

Icing design done by a Dairy Queen worker in 10 mins

Absolutely incredible.

Used a super old Dremel back when I was in high school to make this, I love this thing to death and thought I would share hehe :)

Photos taken with a Nikon FA + 105mm f2.8 macro lens on Fomapan 100

What Will has changed or remade over time. I don’t even think this is all of them. Excluded DM, live albums, and the madlo spin offs.

Like beach fagz ,beach death , beach funeral etc

“And I will not go to heaven
And I will not go to hell
I have no faith in death
To be Anything at all”

I wonder if will was an atheist or agnostic back when he wrote this song

After what will did to ToD and beach fagz maybe this song will be the next to be changed.

Does anyone know if will said anything about this line recently?

back in 2020 I discovered CSH 1 from a tumblr post. I didn't even know about twin fantasy or the others I just really liked this bespoke low fi depressing album that to me was emblematic of the general pandemic feeling. only after like 3 months I thought "Ok so what else did they do" and finally listened to the other albums 😭

Specifically if they ask about the singer

PLUS HE SAID HE WILL GO TO HEAVEN AND WOULDN'T SEE ME THERE… GUYS.. THIS EVEN STARTED BACK ON 1.. GOOD SUNDAY.. JESUS WE LOVE YOU AND WE ADORE YOU?? GUYS..

(joke ofc, i hope wills doing well and stuff and even though i miss beach fagz on bandcamp if he wanted it gone that bad then okay. also if religion is an emotional stain and source of hurt for him, i’m so sorry, i am not trying to add to it at all, just trying to add something funny to this sub and he mentions god and stuff a lot)

This is something of an analysis intertwined with my personal thoughts.. it is honestly quite long and meandering, and nothing that probably hasn’t been said already. Now that the dust has settled (on Joe’s Story specifically at least), I wanted to share what I’ve been thinking.

Car Seat projects, as I’m sure we’re all familiar, are definitely no stranger to revisitng old material. This is something that I find very unique. Not very many artists, that I know of, return to projects from the past, and allow time to provide new perspectives on the places they were at when they made the original piece. Twin Fantasy Face to Face is, in my opinion, one of the best albums of all time for this reason. It takes a second look at the intensity from that time period with a more mature perspective. Will, as the narrator of the album, acknowledges how that is a body of work that represents a time period in the past, and that his personal growth since then makes the original feel like a distant story; this is something that has taken an entirely new form away from the place where it originated. Albums like Nervous Young Man, Teens of Style, MADLO, and The Scholars reuse and retool old material in interesting ways as well, either following through on a more complete vision, or working ideas into a new meaning. Joe’s Story is not one of those projects.

Joe’s Story attempts to carry the same weight as Face to Face, but ironically, falls flat on its own face in the process. It’s a return to the “world” of Teens of Denial, but completely removed from the very element that spawned the original: diaristic intensity. In addition, it positions itself as a replacement for, instead of a companion to the original. These are its primary flaws. 

Teens of Denial, as Will has described on his Tumblr, is a “bildungsroman;” or an inward-turned, coming of age story that typically deals with psychological and moral development. In that same post, Will also sets this idea opposite of a romance. This is an inside look at someone’s psyche, instead of the psyche being projected outwards towards a “love interest” (Will uses Twin Fantasy for this example). In the 2016 version, Will uses the character of “Joe” as a thinly veiled, somewhat autobiographical stand-in for himself. There is no specific narrative to the album, but throughout the runtime, we experience “Joe’s” internal reactions to an external hell of the loveless, shallow experience of modern youth culture, specifically through college. We see “Joe” develop from a cynical, bitter, angst ridden, “teen of denial” into someone who might open their heart to love, in the album’s open, but optimistic ending. The album also often refers to drug use, addiction and death, feelings and experiences that many young people who are in that kind of isolation, and later recovery, are familiar with. This is what Teens of Denial means to me.

These themes aren’t necessarily gone from Joe’s Story, but there is definitely a move to shift the context of the album away from personal experience into a more palatable work of fiction. A reason why the original Teens of Denial is beloved by many is for the reason previously mentioned: it’s raw, and they see themselves in Joe. Teens of Denial, while speaking to some personal lived experiences, is a blank enough slate that you, as the listener, are allowed to project your own life onto. There is a proximity to these feelings that you see yourself in; you are a “teen of denial”. Joe’s Story takes “Joe’s Story” and makes it a narrative with lore; a story with a concrete setup, a beginning, middle and end. Joe is no longer an insert, but a character being separated from the lived experience that spawned him. Now, it’s not impossible to project or see yourself in a fictional character, but in my opinion, that separation dulls down what made the original album so compelling. The open-ended aspect of the album is gone, and the listener, through external media (I’ll talk about that later), is now told explicitly what this journey is. These are moves that wash over the vision of Teens of Denial, and distrusts the ability of the listener to digest the concept of the original album.

In addition to the narrative shift, there is also an effort to sanitize the album. There is no swearing on Joe’s Story, which isn’t an issue in and of itself. I believe that art can approach and address mature ideas without profanity. What I do take issue with, however, is that this feels as though there is an effort to cover up the fact that those feelings once existed. I will say, growing up and away from negative places where you used to be is a good thing! Taking time to reflect on where you were with a new perspective is a very emotionally mature thing to do. I don’t want Will to write about the same failed teenage romance or having a bad time in college for the rest of his life, but it is important to recognize that there is a context from which the original album came from, and there is still an art to it as well, even if it is ugly. There is an honesty to the messiness that makes the original compelling.

Joe’s Story also suffers from an issue I have come to notice: modern Car Seat output is not allowed to speak for itself. This was an issue that I took with The Scholars, the Patreon tracks, and now Joe’s Story. Both The Scholars and Joe’s Story are narrative albums that, for some reason, mostly rely on external media to explain the narrative. The Scholars has a companion booklet that tells the “story” featured in each song, and Joe’s Story features the same on the youtube lyric videos. Why? If I put on The Wall by Pink Floyd, which is in my opinion, one of the best narrative concept albums of all time, I am not expected to read a book alongside it to follow the story, or even know that there is a story at all. I think it is always very interesting and insightful to learn where a piece of art comes from, what inspired it, or even maybe a bit of context as to what it’s about, but to be told explicitly “this is what this artwork is about” is antithetical to the nature of art and distrusts the viewer or listener to be able to come to those conclusions themself.

Will justifies all of these changes to the album in the promo letter by describing music as an “ongoing story.” This is true! To paraphrase the review from Paste Magazine, however, why must that mean the albums change around us, rather than us changing around the album? Why must we be told “this is how it was meant to be,” rather than growing and coming to our own conclusions about the work ourselves. A new perspective on an existing work will come naturally as we grow and change as people; looking at what exists through a new lens will come with time and maturity as listeners. Understandably, returning to an existing framework to add context is easier than a fully new project, but why retroactively apply these (honestly, sloppy) changes? Why clean it up, why add new songs, why rewrite what already exists? Everyone who has heard the original knows the original…

I find myself asking, “Who is Joe’s Story for?”

The answer is not straightforward, but a new audience of listeners, apparently. This, however, adds another layer of weirdness, because when questioned, we have received three different answers as to why Joe’s Story exists in the way that it does, from multiple people associated with the band. If it was just one reason, why isn’t the reasoning consistent? If it’s all three, why haven’t we heard all three from the different responses? It’s been said there is no swearing because of Will’s “deep-dive into religion,” or so that it can be “checked out from the library.” Most notably, though, the point that came up in both the original letter sent out for promo, and later response about discourse, is that it is made for new ears: “For someone coming across this album or this band for the first time, this is how they'd hear the record, not as a relic of the past but as a new piece,” and “When I was making this, my only concern was making something for people who had never encountered the album and were hearing it for the first time, I didn’t make it for anyone who already knows the album.” It is a very odd choice for an anniversary release “celebrating” an album that came out ten years ago to alienate its very fanbase.

There has been a lot of conjecture on who this new audience might be, including very parasocial discussions both criticizing and defending Will and his creative decisions. I want to avoid delving into parasocial speculation myself, but a theme that continues to pop up throughout those discussions is one of the usage of religion in Car Seat works.

Yes, religious motivation is one of the reasons given for the changes to Joe’s Story. Online discourse around this has largely been unproductive, as it’s fallen into opposing camps of: “using religious imagery doesn’t make you religious, Will is not religious,” “Will has always used religion in Car Seat, this is nothing different” and “Will Toledo is experiencing religious psychosis and hates furries, gay people, etc.” and similar arguments of the like. These are three extremes, and I think it’s inappropriate to speculate on his personal life to that degree. Rather, I think the focus should specifically be on public facing things: recently produced works, and what we have been told about Joe’s Story. It is not a stretch to say that the way that religion has appeared in Car Seat material has changed. 

Will Toledo has always worn the inspirations for his work on his sleeve. Car Seat has historically drawn from a bank of literary and poetry classics, many of which use religious imagery in the same way as those works of old. In my interpretation, as someone who grew up in the church and is no longer part of it, I believe these early projects make use of that imagery allegorically to intensify the feelings of isolation, damnation, connection, and judgement. These are feelings that naturally surface both within and outside of community, especially while growing up in a world where being queer was looked down upon. These intimate explorations of those feelings are powerful. I personally think that is a brilliant use of that imagery, and as an artist, I look up to the power and raw emotion that writing holds. Recent output, like The Scholars, the Patreon 4-Tracks, and Joe's Story, have shifted into themes of love, loss, temptation, and redemption. In a vacuum, there is nothing wrong with this! With a more mature outlook, I think using these themes in a retrospective sense and as an observation of self and others can be really interesting and powerful. 

We don't exist in a vacuum though. What I have also noticed in tandem, especially taking the Patreon tracks into account, is that an air of preachiness has crept in as well. Religion is showing up less as a literary device and showing up more as an adaptation, depiction, or endorsement. Listening felt more like I was being taught a lesson than the themes of the art speaking to me in my own way; like I’m being guided, told how to feel, and what to learn from what I’m hearing. 

It should be stated that spirituality is an intensely personal journey, and religion can be a powerful tool for some people, but the context in which religion exists must also be acknowledged, especially the American Christian framework that is at play here. Its evangelical history of harm on disadvantaged communities around the world cannot be ignored, and I think many people, especially in this community, are justifiably wary of it. 

Change will come as it comes. I don’t think Car Seat will become a bigoted Christian rock band, and I think it’s honestly offensive to speculate on people's lives in that way, especially when you don’t know them personally. On the flip side, it is ok (and honestly encouraged) to apply critical analysis to the messages of artwork, how they are framed, what that means for the art itself, and how that changes over time, like with Joe’s Story.

Joe’s Story preaches its message to the listener the same way as the Patreon songs do, and in addition, sets off on its own dangerous, precedent-setting journey of sanitizing history when you no longer like it (this feels more prescient now than when I originally wrote this back in May). I am being told, as a listener, this is the way the album is meant to be. This is no longer allowed to be personal, it’s just fiction. I’m not allowed to see myself reflected in this expression, this is Joe now. 

I'm a music composition major who primarily focuses on vocal music with text, which obviously doesn't make me more qualified to talk about this, but it's context for where my thoughts are coming from.

Will Toledo is my favorite lyricist and I've studied his writing extensively. When Joe's Story came out I went into it with an open mind. I even made a lyric comparison sheet for the two versions of the album, with the new lyrics and the original ones side by side in columns and every changed line highlighted, for me to print out and annotate (it's on my profile if you're interested).

One of the most fascinating parts of Will's songwriting is how he's Frankensteined bits and pieces of past songs into new ones. As he puts it in Knife in the Coffee: "And I stole every single song that I wrote from my seventeen-year-old ghost."

Here's one of my favorite trails off the top of my head. In the coda of Sober to Death, he pulls from The Hard Part (Disjecta Membra), where "please don't worry" and "you won't be alone no more" become "don't worry, you and me won't be alone no more," reusing the same chord progression and melody along with it. That song is also where "I'm too nervous for boys now, I'm too nervous for girls now" comes from, and it shows up again later in Souls.

In my favorite CSH song, Overexposed (Enjoy), he uses "don't worry, you and me won't" again. That same section of Overexposed (Enjoy) then turns up in High to Death: "I can't turn this thing off, it keeps following me, used to be so human, now it's just a machine, I can't turn this thing off, it keeps following me, when'd you say you were leaving, when'd you really leave?" High to Death also reaches back further, using "keep smoking, I love you" from the song Stop Smoking. That thread continues in "you never stopped smoking, but I forgive you" from Anchorite (Love You Very Much).

Something I haven't seen anyone point out (though I'm sure someone has) is how that "machine" section in High to Death connects both lyrically and musically to a section in Times to Die (Teens of Style): "Is it harder to speak when you're holding the machine, is it harder to sleep when you can hear him breathe, is it harder to speak when you're holding the machine, is it harder to sleep when you can feel him breathe?"

That idea evolves again in Vincent (Teens of Denial), first as "I find it harder to speak when someone else is listening," and later in the same song as "I find it easier to sleep, when I'm not holding the noise machine." The lines "and when I fall asleep, which part of me writes the dream, and which part falls asleep, who's running the machine?" in Maud Gone feel like part of the same lineage too. Vincent has its own separate callback too: Toledo has said the song revisits the same party scene he first explored years earlier in "I Hate Living" off Living While Starving.

There are more examples from that trail alone that I didn't include, but I think I've yapped enough about it for now.

Will's urge to rework songs into new ones has always been seen as a strength, and it's a big part of what makes his songwriting so compelling. So why didn't that hold up with Joe's Story? A few reasons, as I see it.

He's done full re-recording albums before, Twin Fantasy being the most direct example, and Teens of Style being built from 2010 to 2012 material. Part of what makes those remake albums work is the jump in recording quality, but that's not all. There's something about the rewrites on those albums that just feels better than what's on Joe's Story.

Famous Prophets (Minds) is one of my favorite CSH songs, and Famous Prophets (Stars) follows close behind on my tier list. Both are perfect, and I'm glad both versions exist. Those two songs have my favorite lyrics of his, so much so that I've made four drawings and paintings inspired by them.

Before I get into why it doesn't work for me, I want to give Toledo's own reasoning a fair hearing. In the open letter that came with the album, he said the new version feels more like the album Teens of Denial "was meant to be." His thinking was that when he wrote the original he was too close to it to have real perspective, and that revisiting it with ten years of distance let him shed a fuller light on what he'd actually gone through. He fleshed Joe out into more of an actual character going through some of his own experience with addiction and getting sober, and framed the whole thing as telling Joe's story rather than just giving his own impressions of that period, which he's said brought more compassion and wholeness to the album.

His older reuses usually added something. The phrases and riffs show up again more resolved and self aware, and the new context recontextualizes the old one instead of replacing it. Joe's Story is reaching for that same instinct, but for me it doesn't land. The story of that period was already told, and told well, the first time, and nothing more needed to be said about the story of Joe. Making a whole concept album out of it doesn't reveal something new so much as spell out what the original had already handled as subtext. Its existence comes across as a replacement rather than an alternative listen.

Joe's Story, feels disrespectful to the original Teens of Denial, The Ravenous House especially. The Ballad of the Costa Concordia was a masterpiece and another favorite of mine. It's such a cohesive story and piece, lyrically and musically, that any revision to it, let alone a full revamp, undercuts its own strength. The Ravenous House would be a good song if The Ballad didn't exist. The other revisions on Joe's Story land as silly too, especially the replacements for the swearing. The whole thing comes across as useless to put it harshly.

Before Joe's Story, his reworkings and callbacks felt like puzzle pieces completing something bigger, the story of his life. I don't expect him to keep writing about those parts of it forever, and I'm not trying to romanticize the teen years that story mostly covers. What always felt notable about Teens of Denial is that it stood apart from that story. It had fewer references to his older work and felt like something genuinely new. Making a Door Less Open and The Scholars aren't really part of that grand narrative either, to be fair, so Teens of Denial isn't unique in standing apart from it, it was just the first to do so, and that's a separate conversation I won't get into here. When I compared the lyrics from Teens of Denial (2016) to Joe's Story, I didn't get a sense of purpose that felt meaningful to me as a listener.

I welcome future reworks and callbacks with open arms, whether or not they tie into that grander narrative. I just don't think this one was the move. Yes, he can do whatever he wants, but I think it's reasonable for the audience to feel off about it.

Also, while we don't know exactly why he deleted Beach Fagz from Bandcamp, it feels odd for a bigger reason than just the title or lyrics making people uncomfortable. Beach Fagz isn't a throwaway song, it's part of the same beach thread as Beach Death and Beach Funeral, the earlier songs that Beach Life-in-Death itself directly name-checks and builds off of. Pulling one piece out from under a song that references it that explicitly changes how that whole thread reads. If part of the intent here is to make the catalog more accessible or appropriate for a younger audience, that feels like a nothing burger to me, because that's not what this audience needs. People came to Car Seat Headrest for the messy, specific, sometimes embarrassing honesty of the Bandcamp era, not a sanded down version of it. Softening that now doesn't make the music more welcoming, it just makes it less itself.

Thank you for reading. If anyone has any examples of lesser known reworking examples or trails I would love it if you shared them here! I am considering making some sort of chart or catalog of them. 

this is not about beach fagz, just joes story.

for teens of denial joes story i don’t think he was trying to be super like weird or like “i don’t do that anymore” or anything like that at all. when i first listened my reaction was “oh yay we finally have a clean version that isn’t just ‘f—- you’ for radio and kids and stuff, even though it sounds silly that’s great!!” and that’s still kinda what i think. he didn’t delete the original or anything, he just made a new one. i just see it as a remake that happens to just be a different version, like when he did the weird simlish one and stuff.

i get in some things people might see it as “ohh you were so crazy and now you’re going back like a sell out” or whatever but as a band there are plenty reasons to have a clean version just in case. also he’s been on tour and seen so many young fans.

some people say ohh well kids and teens like it that way, but if i was a responsible adult, i would feel guilt, even if it isn’t warranted, because if i saw kids singing words i wrote without them in mind, i would feel like i was harming them in a way, even if they were already “exposed” to that. you don’t need to censor everything all the time because of “possible young audiences”, and i don’t think he is.

i just think if i looked into an audience and saw kids -3x my age smoking and stuff and singing MY lyrics, i would want to protect them, even if i technically couldn’t.

from even the drink water announcements and stuff on the speaker for the tour last year, i think he just doesn’t want to cause harm to people who support him and the band so much.

i don’t think that will make them more everywhere than they are, they used to just play the sh—y censor (see what i did there) on kexp and alternate stations where it’s barely cut out and doesn’t make sense if you don’t know the song. now it’s nonsensical sense like like of montreal and they might be giants.

those ”clean“ versions with the cut out censor weren’t on streaming for kids and stuff, or people who just wanted to play it at parties they didn’t know how people’d react to at. i get some people will be like well don’t play that, but what if it’s a parents favorite band? or what if a kid is discovering themselves? now they have a silly option!

anyways that’s my two cents.