Road Warrior: What Will Toledo Has in Store for Car Seat...

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Road Warrior: What Will Toledo Has in Store for Car Seat Headrest

To see more from Car Seat Headrest, check out @notcarseatheadrest on Instagram. For more music stories, head to @music.

Los Angeles gets the bad rap, but really, it’s the Southern US where nobody walks. Halfway across the state or half a mile, you drive to get there. It makes sense, then, that Will Toledo — who grew up in Leesburg, Virginia, a small town that’s especially well-trafficked as a popular commuter suburb of Washington, D.C. — recorded his vocals in the car and named his project Car Seat Headrest (@notcarseatheadrest). It also makes sense that even though Will now lives in Seattle, he often snaps photos of himself and his band in motion — not just in automobiles, but also on planes, trains and even boats.

“As long as I’m not driving, documenting [my travels] is something that occurs naturally to me because there’s not much else to do when you’re traveling from one place to another,” the 23-year-old musician says.

Lately Will has had plenty of time to record his journeys: Car Seat Headrest has been touring almost nonstop since autumn. Though he’s self-released almost a dozen albums on Bandcamp since 2010, it was only last year that indie giant Matador Records signed him and put out the compilation album Teens of Style. The record was roundly praised for both its power pop instrumentation and smart lyrics. (He was an English and religious studies student at the College of William and Mary, after all; his favorite book is James Joyce’s Ulysses.)

Even listening to just a handful of songs from his already considerable catalog, it’s clear why so many people are drooling over him. Will’s reverbed vocals seem to just tumble out of his mouth over a ragged blanket of jangly, fuzzed-out guitar and shaky drums. Spiffing up the record for the label wasn’t as easy as it might seem, however. “For the first time I [had] a lot of people on the other end telling me their opinions on it, and for a while their opinions on it weren’t so hot. So I had to really push myself with the mixing of it to satisfy them. When it went to the mastering phase, they were happy with it, but not really before that,” he says.

Still, if this is what he does by himself, what will happen when he’s given a traditional studio? Fans won’t have to wait very long to find out. Teens of Denial, his first proper studio record, is due this spring — but the process wasn’t without its hiccups, either.

“It was a difficult period writing it, for whatever reason,” he says. “It was my last year of college, and I wasn’t feeling very good about myself. It was hard to write these songs and hard to have the self-confidence to pull it together. It’s definitely one of my angriest albums. But hopefully it’s a fun album as well.”

Even if Car Seat Headrest’s jagged edges are filed down a bit, you get the sense that the DIY feeling and the simple humanity of Will’s music will remain — the same way his photos capture that, no matter if he’s barreling through a snowstorm or passed out on a plane. After all, airports are the great equalizer.

“Everything that conveys some aspect of humanity in a powerful way – that isn’t just stylistically glamorous, but that has depth to it,” he says. “That’s my number one qualifier in art that I like.”

— Rebecca Haithcoat Instagram @music

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