‘Twin Fantasy’ was an album originally released in 2011 by Car Seat Headrest, a fourpiece from Leesburg, Virginia. Lead singer Will Toledo says it was never a finished work, and a new version of the album is set for release on February 16 and is available to preorder.
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Will Toledo knew he would always return to the album; it was never really completed. A fond favourite of fans, it always jarred with him that the mechanical limitations he was faced with at the time, when he recorded the album aged 19 on a cheap laptop. Awkward and amateurish, it’s nonetheless a beautiful album; a work of art. The album document’s Will’s first love, and its songs have attained a ritualistic feel about them. The distortion becomes irrelevant in the face of Will’s incredible vocals and the lyrics themselves –
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“I pretended I was drunk when
I came out to my friends”
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…recounting his hope, despair, his joy.
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Will says of ‘Twin Fantasy’.
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“It was never a finished work, and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.”
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Fans can hold their fears in – the album hasn’t been sanitised of all the flavour and colour of the original. The attention to detail is still there, with their nods to Harper’s Ferry, The Yellow Wallpaper, and the Monopoly board gathering dust in his back seat. The deep feeling also remains. Nothing has been scrubbed “clean”. This is essentially his baby, so he’s taken good care of it, and now, with the help of a full band behind him, a bigger budget, and the leisure to perfect it to his own liking (he took eight months to mix the drums). It now sounds exactly like he wanted it to sound.
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‘Nervous Young Inhumans’ is rocky and raw, with a feel of Bowie during his Berlin period, mixed with Nirvana. It’s post-punk and vaguely industrial, and the accompanying video is as simplistic as the track itself. Stripped back, just Will against a black background, on what seems to be a stage, with occasional flashes of colour (and at one point the head of a bandmate).
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Car Seat Headrest can be seen on January 26 at the Rialto Theatre, in Bozeman Montana. You can buy tickets here. Australian fans can catch them at the Sydney City Limits Festival in Centennial Parklands on February 24 (tickets here), before Car Seat Headrest moves to the other side of the country and their concert in Perth, Western Australia, the next day, at the Rosemount Hotel.
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‘Twin Fantasy’ is available to preorder here. You can find out more about Car Seat Headrest on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Bandcamp.
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