Car Seat Headrest
Faces From the Masquerade
MATADOR
There was a brief moment where it seemed like Car Seat Headrest might have been poised to be one of the biggest indie rock bands to emerge from the last decade. This was in 2016, and to that point they’d hit every checkpoint you’d want a buzzy mid-2010s project to hit on both a critical and fan-based level, thanks largely in part to to-be classic LPs like Twin Fantasy and Teens of Denial. Then, the well dried up—quickly and largely without explanation.
Prior to 2016, Car Seat Headrest’s creative engine Will Toledo embodied a new kind of indie star. Like noted contemporary Alex G, Toledo was a wellspring of creativity, releasing music that felt raw yet realized at a pace that felt almost frenetic. Uploaded to Bandcamp in 2010, his first album featured a note that would define his shy, withdrawn, vulnerable persona: “I probably would not have been able to make this album if I had thought anyone was going to listen to it,” wrote Toledo. This was the star bedroom pop promised.
But after 2016 and a deal with Matador Records, people were listening, and what’s come since has been mystifyingly sparse. To put it into perspective, Teens of Denial marked CSH’s 13th release in seven years. In the seven since, the band has released only a single album of original material to, let’s face it, mixed results. Which brings us to today and the band’s latest release. By their nature, live albums always feel a bit self-celebratory, but Faces From The Masquerade had me genuinely wondering whether this was as much of a swan song as it was a celebration. Was this a way to capture a band at a specific place and time, or a way to say goodbye to something that’s run its course?
The nearly 90-minute record, which captures shows played at NYC’s Brooklyn Steel in support of their 2020 LP Making a Door Less Open, might not definitively answer that question, but it does go a long way in expressing both the charms and limitations of Car Seat Headrest. Speaking as this site’s reviewer of Making a Door Less Open who oh-so-cleverly deemed it “full of holes, but wholly unique,” I must say that what the band chooses to include from that record on Masquerade is one of its most perplexing aspects. There are at least three very good songs on MaDLO, none of which are included here. Rather than providing us with live renditions of “Martin,” “Can’t Cool Me Down,” or “There Must Be More Than Blood,” we get the one-two punch of “Hymn” and “Hollywood,” the latter being perhaps the most reviled song the band has ever released. It almost feels like provocation and is certainly, at the very least, woefully ill-advised. A live LP should play as part greatest hits, but sometimes it can be risky to leave that up to the creator.
That said, when they do reach deep into their bag of actual greatest hits, there are some truly inspiring moments. They make us wait a bit, but the opening riff to “Fill in the Blank” hits as hard as ever, a reminder of how good this band can sound when they're running on all cylinders. Ultimately, the highlights probably won’t surprise you: the dance-floor thrum of Twin Fantasy’s “Bodys,” the swelling “Something Soon,” the digressive brilliance of “Beach Life-in-Death.” Sure, for the most part these are pretty faithful renditions of Car Seat favorites. But there’s a celebratory atmosphere to the whole thing that can’t help but translate.
Whether this is a band whose best songs are in the rearview might be a valid question, but Faces From the Masquerade serves as a pretty good reminder of why that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
