Review: Making a Door Less Open - Car Seat Headrest

By Greg Wiacek

If you listen to indie rock, you’ve likely heard of Car Seat Headrest. They make catchy rock music with attitude, displaying a good ear for pop melodies influenced by the best of the Strokes, Guided By Voices and Daniel Johnston. The lyrics are painstakingly earnest, detailing anxiety, depression and self-doubt with self-deprecating humor that puts you directly in Will Toledo’s shockingly relatable point of view. They employ imaginative and daring songwriting arrangements with a penchant for exploring epic lengths as driven by shifting tempos, dynamics and layers of harmonies - despite the extremely limited resources and recording equipment at hand. They even mastered the art of crafting those meaningless-yet-cathartic mantras you can shamelessly yell at the top of your lungs as anthems – “THE OCEAN WASHED OPEN YOUR GRAVE”; “IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS”; “DRUGS ARE BETTER, DRUGS ARE BETTER WITH FRIENDS ARE BETTER WITH FRIENDS ARE BETTER WITH” – you get it. 

Their 2015 official studio debut, Teens of Denial, made a particularly strong impact on me during the time of its release. I had just graduated college, and had no fucking clue what I was doing with my life. I wasn’t even certain if I was remotely approaching becoming an “adult,” and this album made me feel like it was absolutely normal and acceptable to feel this way. Three years later, the band released the revamped re-recording of 2011’s classic Twin Fantasy. As a big skeptic of re-recorded albums, I felt this was one of the very few instances where such an album could hold up as a faithful revisitation, even improving on it in some ways (or at least carving its own identity by re-imagining songs). 

At this point, the band had clearly demonstrated – and extinguished my doubts – that the transition to a full band and access to a professional recording studio would not dilute the magic that Car Seat Headrest was capable of. When Making a Door Less Open was announced, it had been five years since any original material had surfaced from the band, aside from a few one-off singles. This period was particularly jarring, for when this was a solo project, Will Toledo had been extremely prolific, releasing roughly 10 hour-long projects during the five year period of 2010 – 2014. I was excited to hear the next installment in the Car Seat Headrest story, and figured some of the best material yet was in store – given the amount of time and care that could have been put into it...

Well, that was a nice thought until I finally got to hear the album. 

Those first paragraphs above? Yeah, absolutely none of that shit applies here. Do you like drummer Andrew Katz’s goofy, tongue-in-cheek electropop project 1 Trait Danger mixed with Youtube Poop meme quality humor? Doesn’t matter, that’s what you’re getting here. And let’s quickly discuss the synths and “new” direction here, as that’s been a popular point of discussion amongst fans. I’ve read – and unfortunately heard out loud – some misguided comparisons to LCD Soundsystem; no, LCD don’t use cheap plug-ins, and the music at least has some sense of groove so that your Caucasian male dance moves don’t feel so awkward. 

2014’s How To Leave Town should be evidence enough that the Car Seat Headrest sound can work with synths (especially with cheap sounding ones like the ones used here). The problem is that the experimentation isn’t daring, and adds little to no value to the songs at hand, especially when the aspects I previously loved are completely eschewed in favor of the new sound – the synths here are purely a cosmetic change. There’s not really much substance between the arrangements, melodies and lyrics, there’s no meat to the bones of these songs.

At a 47 minute run time and average song length of under 5 minutes (there’s quite a few songs that exceed the 10 minute mark in Car Seat Headrest’s discography), you’d think this would be a more compact and tight album, but that couldn’t be further from the case. Most of these songs drag on through one single plodding tempo, as moments of tension and release are mostly forgotten to maintain the same tone and dynamic throughout. Epic song arrangements are tossed aside for the traditional verse/chorus format – and you know what, most of that would be fine if the band sounded like they gave a single shit. But the performances generally sound tired, and Toledo’s vocals sound disengaged this time around, rather than just on the surface.

The lyrics throughout the album are vague, which is immensely disappointing when there’s a trove of Toledo quotables and songs driven by engaging narratives; here, they tend to sound like parodies written by people who don’t like this band, capturing what they seem to hear. Toledo sounds like he’s being guarded, another shame because the vulnerability in his music is one of his most endearing traits. What does stick are the grating synth tones, such as the buzzing siren on opener “Weightlifters,” and filtered reverb blurs on “Can’t Cool Me Down.” Where lo-fi sounds rough around the edges were once an effective tool for Car Seat Headrest, it’s like they’re picking some of the most distasteful and cheapest sounds just because. A moment of promise does come up with the “I feel it” bridge in “Deadlines (Hostile),” where you think a cathartic release this band is so good at is coming up, only to be given blue balls as it’s followed up again by a limp chorus.

What in the fuck is “Hollywood” ? This song should be classified as a hate crime. I think it’s safe to say not a single soul puts on Car Seat Headrest to hear something that sounds like 90’s Cake cock-rock with goofy half-raps – *Bob Newhart voice* STOP IT, Andrew Katz (he gets his first songwriting credit here, couldn’t have brought a worse contribution to this project). “Martin” is the closest to the traditional sound they’re best known for, but would certainly be a mediocre track on any other of the band’s releases. “There Must Be More Than Blood” is the longest song at 7 minutes, and you’d expect that it’d be the epic of this album with the most to offer...but it’s mostly just one plodding and droning rhythm with the most understated performance of the album – it comes across as merely padding the runtime. 

There’s three songs I’d straight up call filler on the record – “Hymn (Remix)” doesn’t offer much as mostly an instrumental, although it’s sole saving grace could be how it’s the best use of cheap synths throughout. “What’s With You Lately” has the first appearance of guitarist Ethan Ives as a lead vocalist, but mostly comes off as a pointless interlude – Will Toledo stated in an interview prior to this album that he specifically wanted a song that highlighted each of the members for once, so I guess the trainwreck “Hollywood” goes for Katz, this throwaway for Ethan Ives, and joke’s on bassist Seth Dalby, fuck him, right? “Famous” is an anti-climactic closer, and sounds half-baked with maybe five actual lines of lyrics to serve as hollow chants. Curiously enough, Will Toledo admitted that “it always just made sense for me to end it with ‘Famous,’ to end on this unresolved note, like there’s something missing” – honestly, that just sounds like an excuse.

If there’s one song I think comes closest to achieving the sound that this album is striving for, it’s “Deadlines (Thoughtful)” – the main synth line marches, and actually helps drive and push the song forward. The verses sound fully realized and build tension over the first and second verse, leading up to the release of the chorus. The additional synth that complements the chorus actually sounds pleasing and is a nice touch! The outro even descends perfectly through to the end – whoa, finally something that is 100% good here and demonstrates potential to the direction of this album. “Life Worth Missing” is rather solid as well, as the melodies and use of dynamics are stronger, and make this a more powerful song that demands your attention. 

Making a Door Less Open is ultimately an underwhelming affair from someone known as one of contemporary indie rock’s most ambitious songwriters. These songs sound like half-finished ideas, there doesn’t seem to be a clear and cohesive direction, and the addition of synthesizers is a mostly dull embellishment.

I feel the need to mention that there’s three official versions of this album: the streaming version (which I felt was most appropriate to listen to considering  it’s the most widely available), the CD version and the vinyl version. From what I’ve read and gathered, they’re all largely the same album with rearranged track orders, and some details changed within the songs. This doesn’t sound like a cool gift for fans, but rather the work of someone who is unsure in how to complete and finalize something. If I have come across as overly harsh or deeply disappointed, it’s because Making a Door Less Open is a worthless exercise in creating “just another album” when there could have been so much more to be offered. Simply put: fuck this album.

BOPS: "Deadlines (Thoughtful)," "Life Is Worth Missing"

DUDS: "Hollywood," "Hymn (Remix)," "Famous"