Making A Door Less Open, the new album from Car Seat Headrest and their first collection of entirely new music since 2016, is out now on Matador Records—get it here.
The album is already receiving critical praise:
“…these songs represent some of the most direct and accessible music Toledo has ever made. What’s new here, apart from the rippling synth lines and programmed beats, is the sense of fresh-start possibility and hard-won optimism that infuses nearly every track. Like R.E.M.’s Green, Guided by Voices’ Under the Bushes, Under the Stars or the White Stripes’ Elephant, it’s the sound of an underground band not so much refining itself for mainstream consumption as embracing the pop capabilities it’s always possessed.”—The New York Times
“Car Seat Headrest has become one of most exciting bands in indie rock, a position it gained by continually challenging itself…Mr. Toledo is a terrific lyricist with a penchant for odd and funny lines that don’t seem to belong in rock songs…some of the best indie rock songs of the year.”—Wall Street Journal
“That you could hear all the other potentialities in these songs seems to be Toledo’s point, or at least one of them. Transformation is something that’s hard to capture in the moment—you really only know it’s happened after it’s finally done, or maybe the process never ends. Toledo has made an album that’s bleary, empathetic, desperate, and at times a little messy. Making A Door Less Open embraces those contradictions that we as humans can thrive from: You can be a private person and make blisteringly confessional music. You can wear a mask and bear your soul. A door doesn’t have to be all the way open or all the way closed; maybe it can just be halfway.”—Stereogum
“Making A Door Less Open is Car Seat Headrest’s most ambitious project yet; and, most importantly, it lives up to that ambition, every angle of the album feeling exciting and vital. It’s a necessary re-envisioning of rock music for 2020, and it’s clear that whatever the future of music may look like, Car Seat Headrest will have a place in it.”—Clash
“A new record that pushes their lo-fi signature into newly polished (and labyrinthine) space…Making a Door Less Open invests in the psychic thickness of life’s tiny, everyday moments. Think Proust’s madeleine chased with light drugs and distortion pedals…Car Seat Headrest once again achieves that rare feat of musical engineering: the creation of rich environments that foster feeling, not dictate it.”—PopMatters
Making A Door Less Open features previously released tracks “Hollywood”—which is chart bound at Alternative radio with adds from nearly 30 stations nationwide including New York’s ALT 923 and L.A.’s KROQ, “There Must Be More Than Blood,” “Can’t Cool Me Down” and “Martin.”
Created over the course of four years, Making a Door Less Open is the result of a fruitful “collaboration” between Car Seat Headrest, led by Will Toledo, and 1 Trait Danger, a CSH electronic side project consisting of drummer Andrew Katz and Toledo’s alternate persona, Trait. Read a statement on the album from Toledo, as Trait, here.
Comprised of Will Toledo, Andrew Katz (drums), Ethan Ives (guitar) and Seth Dalby (bass), Car Seat Headrest has either released 11 or three albums to date, depending on the way you look at it. A prolific songwriter, Toledo took his moniker from making early recordings in the private environment of his family’s car, releasing a dozen self-recorded and produced albums on Bandcamp and building a tight-knit following. Toledo has since gone from an empty five-seater to selling out tours and filling festival main stages. 2015’s Teens of Style was a collection of songs from his early years. The band’s proper Matador debut, Teens of Denial, followed in 2016 and catapulted them to overnight commercial success and widespread critical acclaim, as well as highlighting Toledo as a prodigious lyricist. 2018’s Twin Fantasy, an epic re-imagination of an album originally released in 2011, demonstrated newfound scale, depth and ambition.
