After the mixed reactions to their last beat- and synth-heavy album Making a Door Less Open, Will Toledo, the mastermind behind Car Seat Headrest, must have racked his brains over what to do next. While the band’s early masterpieces Teens of Denial and Twin Fantasy were already concept albums, the new work The Scholars has become a full-fledged rock opera in the style of The Who’s Tommy. The experiences and reflections of the students at the fictitious Parnassus University, which are the subject of the new songs, naturally tie in with the coming-of-age theme that Toledo has obviously specialized in.
Apparently never really fans of hidden allusions, subtle nuances or dogmatic tendencies in their sound, Toledo and his three bandmates completely erase the boundary between alternative and stadium rock on The Scholars. Even in the shorter tracks, the bombast erupts with regularity. And in the longer tracks – in the case of »Planet Desperation« one of them is an impressive 19 minutes long – the band takes this megalomaniacal approach to the extreme. Toledo were actually inspired by Shakespeare and Mozart. The Scholars is the proof: unfortunately, car seat headrests don’t get any smaller.
The Scholars
