Car Seat Headrest's first album arrived on Bandcamp in 2010 with sixteen tracks of bedroom recordings made by Will Toledo while still a teenager. The sound is deliberately ragged: vocals buried under fuzz, drums that clip, guitars recorded through laptop mics. Songs like "Cesare the Somnambulist" and "up all night" stretch past six minutes, circling the same few chords until they wear grooves into your skull. There's more Guided by Voices here than Pavement, more four-track hiss than careful arrangement.
Toledo later said he wouldn't have made it if he'd thought anyone would hear it, and that shows. These are private recordings made public by accident of timing and platform. The melodies are strong enough to survive the lo-fi treatment, "big jacket" and "good sunday" both have hooks that cut through the murk, but this is not music trying to impress anyone. It's the sound of someone working things out alone in a room, hitting record because the songs needed to go somewhere. Fans who came in later via "Teens of Denial" might find this one difficult. Anyone drawn to early Sebadoh or the more unvarnished end of nineties indie will recognise the appeal immediately.
