Car Seat Headrest

Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)

It’s an album of dizzying highs and crushing lows, full of triumphant moments that seem built for a grand, Phil Spector wall of sound that Toledo previously had no access to.

Rock music has a bad habit of looking backwards, and the same can be said of Car Seat Headrest’s Twin Fantasy. But this album flips that rearview gaze on its head, suggesting that the past may well contain new and exciting paths forward. It’s a neat inversion that yields some of the most thrillingly ambitious indie rock compositions of this decade, though one that occasionally exhausts the listener into submission.

Thanks to the fact that Car Seat Headrest is now a band rather than a solo recording project, there’s more spit and polish to the songs, a level of gloss that Twin Fantasy really benefits from.

The age-old saying goes if something isn't broken, don't fix it, but the re-release of Twin Fantasy shows that, seven years later, Car Seat Headrest are capable of re-contextualizing their work in ways that cement the faith that we have in them as revolutionary musicians.

The new release of Twin Fantasy never panders to the original. Nor does it feel like Toledo is forced to adhere to the limitations of his previous work. It’s a development, not a remake; the full realisation of what was always supposed to be - and it sounds all the more incredible for it.

As well-realized as the original Twin Fantasy was, and as much as it's defined by a specific period in its creator's life, it's obvious that Toledo sees the project as a fluid work.

But to new(er) fans, Face to Face will satisfy the itch engendered by the gestation period between those two records and remind that Denial wasn’t Car Seat Headrest’s first sprawling opus.

The arrangements are tighter and better executed, the audio is strong enough to suit the music and its dynamics, and Toledo's performances are more measured but also more nuanced, as if he has a better understanding of this story from a distance of a few yeqars. Either way, Twin Fantasy leaves no doubt that Toledo is a strikingly gifted and thoughtful songwriter who also has a firm grasp of how to make his material work in the studio, and isn't afraid to think on a grand scale.