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Feb 26, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Carlos Cruz Car Seat Headrest

Car Seat Headrest (aka Will Toledo and band) have announced a new album, Making a Door Less Open, and shared its first single, “Cool Me Down.” The band have also announced some new tour dates. Making a Door Less Open is due out May 1 via Matador. Check out “Cool Me Down” below via a lyric video, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as the tour dates.

Car Seat Headrest’s last album, Twin Fantasy, came out in 2018 via Matador. It was a re-imagined version of an album also titled Twin Fantasy that Toledo self-released to Bandcamp in 2011. But his last album of completely new material was 2016’s Teens of Denial. In 2019 the band also released the live album Commit Yourself Completely.

As well as Toledo, the band features Andrew Katz (drums), Ethan Ives (guitar), and Seth Dalby (bass). Making a Door Less Open had a somewhat unique recording process. In a press release it is billed as a collaboration between Car Seat Headrest and 1 Trait Danger, a Car Seat Headrest “electronic side project consisting of drummer Andrew Katz and Toledo’s alternative persona, ‘Trait.’” The album was recorded twice, first with guitars, bass, and drums and then secondly with purely synthesized sounds. Then in the mixing process the two recordings were combined.

Toledo had this to say about the album on the band’s website: “This album was made from January 2015 to December 2019, starting as a collection of vague ideas that eventually turned into songs. I wanted to make something that was different from my previous records, and I struggled to figure out how to do that. I realized that because the way I listened to music had changed, I had to change the way I wrote music, as well. I was listening less and less to albums and more and more to individual songs, songs from all over the place, every few days finding a new one that seemed to have a special energy. I thought that if I could make an album full of songs that had a special energy, each one unique and different in its vision, then that would be a good thing.

“Andrew, Ethan, Seth and I started going into the studio to record songs that had more finished structures and jam on ideas that didn’t. Then I would mess with the recordings until I could see my way to a song. Most of the time on this album was spent shuttling between my house and Andrew’s, who did a lot of the mixing on this. He comes from an EDM school of mixing, so we built up sample-heavy beat-driven songs that could work to both of our strengths.

“Each track is the result of an intense battle to bring out its natural colors and transform it into a complete work. The songs contain elements of EDM, hip hop, futurism, doo-wop, soul, and of course rock and roll. But underneath all these things I think these may be folk songs, because they can be played and sung in many different ways, and they’re about things that are important to a lot of people: anger with society, sickness, loneliness, love…the way this album plays out is just our own interpretation of the tracks, with Andrew, Ethan and I forming a sort of choir of contrasting natures.

“I think my main hope for the world of music is that it will continue to grow by taking from the past, with a consciousness of what still works now. Exciting moments in music always form at a crossroads -a new genre emerges from the pieces of existing ones, an artist strips down a forgotten structure and makes something alien and novel. If there is a new genre emergent in our times, it has not yet been named and identified, but its threads come from new ways of listening to all types of music, of new methods of creating music at an unprecedented level of affordability and personal freedom, of new audiences rising up through the internet to embrace works that would otherwise be lost, and above all from the people whose love of music drives them to create it in the best form they possibly can. Hopefully it will remain nameless for some time, so it can be experienced with that same newness and strangeness that accompanies any and all meaningful encounters with music.”

Also feel free to read our 2015 interview with Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo.

Making a Door Less Open Tracklist:

Vinyl Tracklist:

1. Weightlifters
2. Can’t Cool Me Down
3. Hollywood
4. There Must Be More Than Blood
5. Hymn
6. Deadlines
7. Martin
8. What’s With You Lately
9. Life Worth Missing
10. Famous

CD Tracklist:

1. Weightlifters
2. Can’t Cool Me Down
3. Hollywood
4. Martin
5. Hymn (Remix)
6. There Must Be More Than Blood
7. Deadlines
8. What’s With You Lately
9. Life Worth Missing
10. Famous
11. Deadlines (Alternate Acoustic) [Bonus Track]
12. Hollywood (Acoustic) [Bonus Track]

Car Seat Headrest Tour Dates:

April 25-North Adams, MA-MASS MoCA
May 27-St. Paul, MN-Palace Theatre
May 28-Milwaukee, WI-Pabst Theatre
May 29-Chicago, IL-The Vic
May 30-Chicago, IL-The Vic
June 2-Detroit, MI-The Majestic
June 3-Toronto, ON-Danforth
June 4-Toronto, ON-Danforth
June 6-Boston, MA-House of Blues
June 7-Portland, ME-State Theatre
June 9-New York, NY-Brooklyn Steel
June 10-New York, NY-Brooklyn Steel
June 11-New York, NY-Brooklyn Steel
June 13-Philadelphia, PA-Franklin Music Hall
June 14-Washington, D.C.-Anthem
June 16-Raleigh, NC-The Ritz
June 17-Asheville, NC-Orange Peel
June 18-Columbia, SC-The Senate
June 19-Atlanta, GA-Tabernacle
June 20-Nashville, TN-Brooklyn Bowl
July 9-Vancouver, BC-The Commodore
July 10-Vancouver, BC-The Commodore
July 11 -Seattle, WA-Paramount
July 12-Portland, OR-Roseland
July 14-San Francisco, CA-The Warfield
July 17-San Diego, CA-Observatory North Park
July 18-Los Angeles, CA-The Wiltern
July 19-Phoenix, AZ-Van Buren
July 22-Austin, TX-Stubb’s
July 23-Houston, TX-White Oak
July 24-Dallax, TX-Granada
July 25-Oklahoma City, OK-The Tower
July 26-Kansas City, KS-The Crossroads
July 28-Denver, CO-The Ogden

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