Disclaimer: This review is extremely delayed due to the writer’s extensive feelings on Car Seat Headrest AND her lack of willpower to confront them head-on.
“You have so many songs. Do they remain therapeutic, or do they get stale over time?” The question comes from drummer Andrew Katz. He’s chuckling a bit and reading it in place of the fan who sent it over social media days earlier.
Frontman Will Toledo considers this with mic in-hand. He says something to the effect of, “Yeah.” Some songs grow old, but removing them from the set for a while and paying a revisit later usually does the trick. Then, in the rockstar-slanted attitude of his latest release Teens of Denial, he finishes with, “Whatever, bad question.” The crowd laughs, jumps to “Connect the Dots (The Saga of Frank Sinatra),” and the show’s over.
The looks of a SOLD OUT marquee outside The Sinclair tells half of this story. Will Toledo is big, and Car Seat Headrest is bigger. If the fleet of hyped talkers that filed in throughout Lucy Dacus‘s opening set wasn’t proof (rude and unappreciated), the sing-a-longs ensued once Toledo took the stage certainly were. With 12 lo-fi albums in the recent past, the Pacific northwestern outfit is a more focused kind of rock band now, and THIS was a rock show to fit: a launch and a departure at the same time. It made me happy. It made me sad, and I think when it comes to the bands we lovingly follow, this simultaneous tug is sort of meant to be.
Among the tall boys holding “tall boys,” Car Seat Headrest opened with the light drum beat of “The Ending of Dramamine” off How to Leave Town, the album commonly referred to as the band’s ultimate point of lo-fi pride. The masterpiece song of years’ past tumbled into today’s hit “Fill in the Blank,” and the set officially kicks into motion. Everyone knew the lyrics, ironically smiling and shouting: “If I were split in two, I would just take my fists so I could beat up the rest of me.” When the applause hit, the band mentions something about “getting destroyed” in New York the night before and that they like Boston better, at least for tonight.
Toledo himself looked like he just rolled out of bed late for his First Holy Communion™, which is an aesthetic I could both get behind and relate to. Messy hair and fitted suit, he plowed through songs off the new album alongside a cover of David Bowie’s “Blackstar.” All were crowd favorites. People literally spewed sentences like, “This is too good.” “I love you.” One man even asked me what I was doing taking notes at a show like this. “Just enjoy it,” he said as I try to jot down a comparison between the song “America” and road trips themselves *chews pen, holds tongue.*
However, please don’t twist my cynicism over feeling buried in the crowd with the actual quality of Car Seat Headrest live. The performance was high-energy, hilarious and weirdly elevated in audio quality. Toledo’s voice soared further onstage than I’d ever heard over headphones, especially with “Times to Die,” the first song of the set without his guitar in hand. He was awesome on mic, dry with banter, and if I denied being attracted to him the way my mom was (and is) to late-career Paul McCartney, I’d be lying. A real “Teen of Denial” in the flesh.
All that said, I watched this set with the realization that an artist I’ve adored for years now is momentarily moving on: from 14-minutes songs, from my $25-dollar maximum ticket budget, from venues where touching the stage is realistic for all sizes. “He’s probably never playing a club this small again,” texted my photographer before the show. The night–rockstar and rowdy in its own right–was excitingly bittersweet because it was the “last” of something. Toledo is likely never recording in his own trunk again (at least not out of obligation), and honestly he’s earned this next stage. However, I couldn’t avoid the significance of “Sober to Death” in the encore. “Hold onto the ghost of my body,” sang Toledo. I put my notebook away, figuring tons of people had taken these same notes, but perhaps on their own favorite bands, before.
