It’s been at least a decade since Car Seat Headrest achieved a critical breakthrough, yet they’ve hardly shed their reputation as a college band. Look at it one way, and The Scholars is yet another audacious experiment from the Will Toledo-led project after the ambitious electronics and insular narrative of 2020’s Making a Door Less Open, an embrace of the rock opera as a natural fit, and extension of, their evolving inclinations as a band. Look at it another way, and it’s a chance to age into their indie rock cred and channel their communal spirit in the form of a concept album about a fictional university, playing with a cast of characters as they split songwriting duties yet uniting over the album’s most pervasive themes – illness, legacy, rebellion. Though it meanders and wears the listener out in its final stretch, it rewards those who are patient and studious enough to dive into the narrative. Even if you find yourself losing interest, it’s hard not to leave convinced this is the scale and territory they should be working with.
1. CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)
This being a track-by-track review, it’s tempting to use the format to unpack the lore surrounding The Scholars the way a diehard fan would, attempting to make sense of its puzzling narrative by digging through the lyric sheet. But I’m more interested in how much a more casual – if still devoted – fan can get out of the album by focusing on the music itself. That said, a little context is still useful to get your foot in the door with this record. ‘CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)’ dives headfirst into the world of Parnassus University by introducing us to Beolco, a student who seems to believe himself a kind of spiritual descendant of its founder, a playwright named the Scop. It’s his most unsound thoughts that teeter on the profound: “There was a line that my idols crossed that I could not cross/ On the other side is love and right here is loss,” Toledo sings.
As an eight-minute epic, the song is a testament to how well the band can pull off a suite, piling one great hook on top another. You don’t have to decipher the lines Toledo spins over and over again to be delighted by the melody; not when the singer himself sounds so carefree. “Remember I told you, you in the air, everything that you ever wanted to feel, take a look at everything waiting around you,” he sings to draw the song to a close; you’re not even sure who’s speaking to who, but it hits.
2. Devereaux
The question of lineage carries over into the second track, which centers on the “son of a backwaters religious conservative” trying his luck at the nearby Clown College. In desperation, he prays not to the college’s founder but the grandfather who shares his name: “In the space between here and you/ There’s a kid who don’t know what to do/ He waits in the silence to hear.” (In the previous song, it is “the Silent Whisper” that delivers the chorus.) There’s less catharsis in this song, but it’s CSH at their most classically indie rock, which almost distracts from its thematic connection to the opener.
3. Lady Gay Approximately
Here’s a song where the background does more work than the actual music: “Malory joins the ‘birds of paradise,’” we learn, “a community based on beautification through the feather-and-fur modification, extensive costumery, prosthetics, and the like. After a year without contact with his parents, he shows up on Christmas night unadorned and silent, for a tense dinner with his mother.” Though that story should stand strong outside the context of the album, the tension barely shines through, mostly just simmering. Yet it makes sense that it’s here.
4. The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)
The band ramps things up quickly with ‘The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)’, which is buoyant and fiery in a way familiar to even the most casual CSH fans. We once again hear through the perspective of the Chanticleer, which is also when the songs naturally feel more personal, if not straight-up autobiographical. The song is about a troupe of clown troubadours, but it’s hard not to read into it as meta-commentary on touring: “I’ve driven through the desert of irony/ Driven all around and I’ve seen a great many/ Bones, dry bones in American towns.” It feels sincere and lived-in, communal and cathartic. The Wall and Ziggy Stardust are touchstones for this record, certainly, but the pop-punk grandiosity and self-reflection align it with American Idiot, too. It works better than you’d expect.
5. Equals
Here’s where things get a little muddled, plot-wise – or thrilling, depending on how invested you are in the story. Described as “a frantic late-night conversation” between Bealco and a college professor accused of stealing the skull of a college bard, and doubling as commentary on cancel culture, ‘Equals’ has little to offer beyond the record’s esoteric framework; at least it doesn’t drag out.
6. Gethsemane
As a testing ground for The Scholars’ knotty ambitions, ‘Gethsemane’ knocks it out of the park. Its 11 minutes reward the listener even if they can’t separate the different perspectives of the song, whose serpentine arrangement and heavy philosophizing come to life thanks to an especially potent vocal performance from Toledo. Besides, the story of Rosa, a medical student at the university who can absorb the pain of her patients, might be the album’s most captivating. “There’s nothing left to offer to restore what has been taken,” our narrator proclaims. “Your body is a temple, but your holy wounds are aching.” It cuts to the bone, leaving you dazed and hungry for context. Luckily, The Scholars offers plenty.
7. Reality
We learn that Chanticleer has apparently fallen victim to “madness or an early death,” blurring the line between the two. Attempting to reach through, Chanticleer’s ghost sings to his bandmates: “Well if you can take me when the mountains break/ And the sea swallows up the sky/ You can ride on me, I’ll take you beyond belief/ I will show you the reason why.” It should be the album’s most moving song, but at 11 minutes, its sentimentality feels outstretched and somewhat forced. It’s refreshing to hear guitarist Ethan Ives sing co-leads, but with Toledo having previously voiced the character of Artemis, the story only becomes harder to follow for the listener, making what should be the most cathartic point in its arc feel slightly redundant.
8. Planet Desperation
The Scholars’ towering climax is a towering space-prog odyssey that marks the band’s longest song to date, clocking in at nearly 19 minutes. We follow Hyacinth, the dean of Parnassus’s Liberal Arts school, who has been poisoned by the rival Clown College and bears witness to scenes of destruction at his campus. He even gives a shoutout to Ziggy Stardust, which seems obligatory given just how closely it hews back to that particular concept album. But it isn’t the kind of multi-part, hook-filled suite that CSH have perfected; there are several movements, but they serve the theatrical format rather than driving the momentum of the song. Yet it gives Toledo the space to deliver some of his most pointed and soaring lyrics on the album: “’Til the kids grow up all right/ Until hearts don’t break anymore/ Until we don’t spend the rest of our lives fixing everything that happened before.” It’s bolstered by the return of the record’s strongest refrain, “You can love again/ If you try again” and ‘Gethsemane’, as if to say: believe, even if you die trying.
9. True/False Lover
Surprise! Chanticleer has been alive this whole time, so the record comes to a close with its shortest and most effortlessly upbeat song. After more than half an hour of risky experimentation and classic rock opera worship, ‘True/False Lover’ serves as a reminder of Car Seat Headrest’s natural impulses as an ambitious indie rock band for the playlist era. “Home forever, out the backdoor, one more time/ Fields are planted, waiting for the summertime,” Toledo sings. No matter how many pivots they make, their music can’t help but ultimately feel like a homecoming.
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