Twin Fantasy
Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo’s decision to re-record Twin Fantasy, his 2011 solo album, with his current band is an almost unheard of move in music. Right away, this risky decision results in a masterwork, with its cascading guitars, skyrocketing melodies and goosebump-inducing dynamic moments. Toledo borrows liberally from any decade that suits the song, and echoes of The Cars, The Strokes and Pavement can be heard at various moments throughout. Toledo’s chief focus moves violently between sex and death, as the now 25-year-old revisits his former teenage self’s preoccupation with the body, both its worship and its collapse. Across its fried and fuzzed guitar-heavy expanse, Twin Fantasy is equally preoccupied with the light and dark, an indie-rock opera fluctuating and fading in a celebration of life and its ecstatic summation.