CAR SEAT HEADREST with LUCY DACUS at the Mod Club (722 College), Monday (September 19), doors 7:30 pm, all ages. $17.50. ticketfly.com. See listing.
If you read any press about Car Seat Headrest‘s new album, Teens Of Denial (Matador), one recurring argument in every review is which 90s indie bands were undeniable influences. Music writers have no shortage of opinions as to what founder/band leader Will Toledo must have been listening to. Instead of musing about what influenced his songwriting, we asked Toledo himself.
60s rock bands
Toledo grew up listening to the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks and the Beach Boys – not Pavement, Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr. “The reason I wanted to play guitar was so I could do stuff like on those records. I get compared to indie bands from the 90s, but I think they were listening to the same music as me. I think that’s where the similarity comes from.”
90s alt-rock, not indie rock
Sure, he’s a fan of Guided by Voices, but “Nirvana and Green Day were my two favourites for a long time. [They] shaped my songwriting style in a specific way because I heard them right around the time I was learning how to play guitar. I drew out pop melodies from Green Day, and maybe a little more experimental, underground stuff from Nirvana. Not a whole lot of indie influences.”
Frank Sinatra’s life, not music
Sinatra is undoubtedly one of the most influential artists of all time, but it’s not his music that impacted Car Seat Headrest’s new album. “I read James Kaplan’s Frank: The Voice while writing the record,” Toledo says. “I didn’t know anything about the guy beforehand, nor was I particularly interested in his music, but the whole story of his life just blew me away. With the music I listen to, there aren’t a lot of self-driven artists who push their way to the top and push to stay at the top.”
Ernest Becker’s The Denial Of Death
Toledo picked up this 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book because it reminded him of his album’s title. “It’s a psychology book I read toward the end of writing the album. I wish I’d read it at the beginning so I could’ve worked with his ideas more. But it sort of outlines the theory of mankind’s existence. A lot of it is Freudian, but the idea is that most of what humans do is driven by a subconscious fear of death.”
Williamsburg, Virginia
Toledo now lives in Seattle, home to countless bands critics assume he loves, but the birthplace of grunge didn’t have the same affect on him as this square, colonial town. “When I listen to the new record, I think of Williamsburg because that’s where I went to college. It’s a very weird town if you spend a lot of time there: there’s the college, the colonial part of town and the townspeople living there. It was weird, and there’s a flavour to it that was imparted on the album, especially in the lyrics.”
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