Art Gets What It Wants And Art Gets What It Deserves

Car Seat Headrest “Times to Die”

A thing I really love about Will Toledo’s music is how often the songs sound like they’re being made up on the spot. This is a major feature of Car Seat Headrest’s live show, where I’m pretty certain I have literally seen them improvise new material on stage, but it’s apparent in a song like “Times to Die,” which has a very eccentric, nonlinear structure. It is in fact a highly structured song with very deliberate lyrics, but the feeling in the recording is that Toledo keeps remembering that he has more things to talk to you about, and so he keeps adding a bit more time to your trip, like “Fuck it, let’s drive another few blocks.” He’s got a lot on his mind, though! “Times to Die” is about him getting signed to Matador, and the Book of Job, and feeling like your friends have more adult lives than you, and grand ambitions, and the peculiarities of organized religion and sacraments, feeling on the outside of things, literally dying, metaphorically dying, and probably seven or eight other things. He piles on the hooks and bridges and asides and ideas as though this is the only song he’ll ever write, but the beautiful thing is that this is all coming from a hugely prolific songwriter who’s got an entire other record in the can as his Matador debut comes out this week. He’s very interesting, to say the least.

Buy it from Amazon.