Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial
Critic Score
Based on 30 reviews
2016 Ratings: #48 / 1004
Year End Rank: #16
User Score
2016 Rank: #11All Time: #290
Liked by 689 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
A.V. Club
Car Seat Headrest may be 12 albums into its career, but Toledo shows no sign of slowing down. Through the record’s unrelenting buzz of power chords and fuzzy vocals, slow-burn anthems and primal screams, Toledo seems to be saying, buckle in; I’m taking you somewhere exciting. Trust him.
93
Paste

With Teens of Denial, Toledo has practically guaranteed himself a viable career for years to come. The fact he did it while still in his early twenties after laying a foundation of solid self-released records proves even further that his most creative days are probably still ahead of him.

91
Pretty Much Amazing
This is an album that belongs in a 2016 time capsule, and one that any indie bard hopeful should be required to hear.
90
Gigwise
It's difficult to know if after 13 albums anything can be career-defining, but if this turns out to be Toledo's exposure to a wider audience, few would complain that he didn't deserve it.
90
No Ripcord

It’s the adequate album to write when you’re on a quest to become something, later to realize that you’ve no idea how to carry on fulfilling that need. It’s a transition that Toledo perfectly captures, one that he’s relieved to have outgrown.

85
Pitchfork

Teens of Style was already great, but Teens of Denial is such a leap forward that it still manages to surprise.

85
Under the Radar

Supplanting the hazy radio qualities of his DIY endeavors, a bold palette of past-era pop melody splashes all over Teens of Denial, which is also mixed beautifully, utilizing just enough restraint on instrumental reverb for the parts to hug one another.

85
Spectrum Culture

Teens of Denial is a generous record bursting with so many ideas that Toledo seems like he’s rushing to get them out, trying to connect and willing to share personal stories of failure.

83
Consequence of Sound

Teens of Denial takes its power from its absence of blind spots, its lack of Freudian suppression. Toledo looks long at himself and us, a sort of nauseous survivor of modernity.

80
Mojo
Toledo's ability to craft songs that swerve from fuzz-pop to jaded melancholia making him a cut above his underground contemporaries.
80
Exclaim!

Despite clocking in at a whopping 70 minutes, Car Seat Headrest pack enough hooks in to avoid lagging, thanks to Toledo's practice with his lengthy yet phenomenal earlier albums Twin Fantasy and How to Leave Town.

80
God Is in the TV

It’s bold, it’s more adventurous than most bands manage in an entire career, when it’s good it’s brilliant but there are patches that are pretty crap. And yet somehow, against the odds, it works.

80
The Needle Drop
Singer-songwriter Will Toledo pushes bedroom pop and lo-fi rock to the next level on the new Car Seat Headrest album.
80
Dork

An enigma wrapped inside an self-depreciating shrug and a scribbled brain-dump; it may be white, male indie-rock, but it’s white, male indie-rock that understands itself perfectly.

80
FLOOD Magazine

Teens of Denial showcases most of the weapons in Toledo’s arsenal: deft wordplay, a vocal style that might be the very definition of ennui, and tight guitar-driven indie rock arrangements that recall Weezer, Beck, and Jonathan Richman.

80
The Young Folks

Conceptual, playful and even rousing at times, Teens of Denial is a perfect example of how to shameless worship the indie gods of the 90’s while still making something that sounds unique, fresh, and perhaps most importantly, demonstrates the sound of an artist hitting their stride and making real and significant progress.

80
Record Collector

In a time when US indie is thriving ... on Teens Of Denial, Car Seat Headrest makes his case for being leader of the pack.

80
XS Noize

Teens of Denial contains all the attractive ungainliness of youth and insightfully describes that often stark and desolate period which is the teenage/post grad years. There is a lot to like on the album and it reveals more and gets more addictive with each listen.

80
Uncut
Noting Will Toledo's youth, expression and obvious touchstones makes him sound like just another slacker pop dude. But there’s much more to his records as CSH, all but one of which he’s released via Bandcamp.
80
Rolling Stone
Like Courtney Barnett, he comes off as a rock-loving child of alt-rock's skepticism working backwards towards something to believe in.
80
DIY
There’s so much going on here that it can be borderline overwhelming. It’s a record that’s enigmatic, a little deceptive in places, and thoroughly gripping throughout.
80
The 405
Like fellow Bandcamp progenitor Frankie Cosmos, Toledo locks his gimlet eye over these crazy days and finds that, for the most part, anxiety often lurks in the minutiae.
80
NME
‘Teens Of Denial’ is the work of a precocious talent. Most tracks last over five minutes and the longest comes in at 12. It gives the impression that Toledo is doing what he wants and making the music he wants to hear. You can’t help but love him for it.
80
AllMusic

Rock history teaches us you can't will a masterpiece into existence, but with Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial, Will Toledo has created something like a novel after previously offering us short stories, and it's a piece of rough-hewn brilliance.

80
Tiny Mix Tapes

Teens of Denial vaults through references to stand alone, rapturous and sincere — a fuzzy framework from the floor of all we know.

75
The Line of Best Fit

His most accomplished work yet. The album is enhanced by watertight production, but its album’s biggest attraction is still Toledo’s lyrics, which are humorous and intelligent without pretentiousness. 

70
SPIN

It’s hard not to find Teens of Denial at least a little bit exhilarating, because Toledo’s now-fully-formed voice is such a new and powerful one, and because it’s easy to see how young listeners will find an entire universe to behold within.

70
The Sydney Morning Herald

Teens Of Denial, Toledo's first "proper" studio LP, amplifies that ambition – horns, organs, 11-minute ballads – over 69 minutes. In such, it recalls a phenomenon as '90s as 12-eye Docs: incredibly long albums.

60
FasterLouder

By and large ... the music here is undermined by a sense of redundancy.

60
PopMatters

To anoint Toledo the voice of a generation is premature; Teens of Denial looks no further forward than the next update to Cards Against Humanity with the First World problems of album opener “Fill in the Blank”.

zachthesnack
92

IT DOESNT HAVE TO BE LIKE THISS

IT DOESNT HAVE TO BE LIKE THISSSSS

JoaoSantos
95

fuck

ST4T1C
100

Yeah, no, I'm rewriting this one, cause I have a lot to say about this one.

This album a lot of the time is sorta talked about by fans, myself included at the time, in the shadows of other albums under the CSH name like Twin Fantasy, How To Leave Town, since those albums are a lot more forward in why they are amazing. However, after many many more relistens and growing with it for the past 2-3 years, I'm happy now to report that this album is now among the greats for me.

"Teens Of ... read more

alfa985
99

The pinnacle of a coming of age story !

I have very few complaints about this album, the only song I could call bad or forgettable is probably unforgiving girl, the rest is absolutely immaculate.
This is a loose concept album, it follows the protagonist Joe, who is basically just a self insert for Will (but this time a lot less gay), throughout the record we see him preform a bunch of juvenile acts which he always regrets almost immediately. He borderline abuses drugs throughout the record, ... read more

denkirena
80

So good, but some of the songs are really forgettable

ashlynforrealz
99

99 because unforgiving girl exists

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Added on: March 24, 2016