Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy

Twin Fantasy (Face To Face) is the twelfth studio album by American indie rock band Car Seat Headrest, originally released in February 2018 via Matador Records.

Car Seat Headrest is the project of Seattle singer songwriter Will Toledo. With a vision that is both sweeping in scope and intimately personal, Car Seat Headrest embodies the DIY ethos at its best.

Car Seat Headrest began in 2010 in Will’s hometown of Leesburg, Virginia. Needing a place of solitude (and soundproofing) where he could record his often frantic vocals undisturbed, a 17-year old Will set up shop in the family car (hence the name). From this humble origin, he has since built up a catalogue of staggering breadth and depth. In the last five years there have been over ten releases under the Car Seat Headrest name, one of which exceeds two hours in length.

While the songs of Car Seat Headrest are often long and complex, they are anchored by irresistible melodies and a piercing emotional directness. Dispersed across the globe, the CSH fanbase is the definition of a cult following: several thousand internet denizens who deeply connect with Will’s intensely honest and unfiltered approach to writing and performing.

On 16^th February 2018 Car Seat Headrest released a new version of Twin Fantasy (originally released in 2011). “It was never a finished work,” Will says, “and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.” He has, now, the benefit of a bigger budget, a full band in fine form, and endless time to tinker.  According to him, it took eight months of mixing just to get the drums right. But this is no shallow second take, sanitized in studio and scrubbed of feeling. This is the album he always wanted to make. It sounds the way he always wanted it to sound.

It’s been hard, stepping into the shoes of his teenage self, walking back to painful places. There are lyrics he wouldn’t write again, an especially sad song he regards as an albatross. But even as he carries the weight of that younger, wounded Will, he moves forward. He grows. He revises, gently, the songs we love so much. In the album’s final moments, in those apologies to future me’s and you’s, there is more forgiveness than fury.

This, Will says, is the most vital difference between the old and the new: he no longer sees his own story as a tragedy.

Twin Fantasy (Face To Face) received universal critical acclaim upon release.

This double album 2LP record set is a 2023 repress on black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeves and a download, pressed in Europe via Matador.