Car Seat Headrest on Double Vinyl Double Vinyl from Car Seat Headrest is available for home delivery with Vinyl Records London, only £24 +P&P Car Seat Headrest announce The Scholars, a bold new rock opera that isnt just a new chapter for the premiere standard bearers of young internet rockers but also a spiritual rebirth, and the bands first studio album in five years.Set at the fictional college campus Parnassus University, the songs on The Scholars are populated with students and staff whose travails illuminate a loose narrative of life, death, and rebirth. Inspired by an apocryphal poem by 34Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo,34 and featuring character designs from Toledos friend, the cartoonist Cate Wurtz, the first half of the album focuses on the deep yearning and spiritual crisis of the titular Scholars. They range from the tortured and doubtfilled young playwright Beolco to Devereaux, a person born to religious conservatives who finds themselves desperate for higher guidance. The second part features a series of epics detailing the clash between the defenders of the classic texts and the young person who doesn039t care about the canon, who is going to tear all of that up, basically, Toledo says. And so within this one campus, there becomes a war. From Shakespeare to Mozart to classical opera, Toledo pulled from the classics when devising the lyrics and story arc of The Scholars, while the music draws, carefully, from classic rock story song cycles such as The Whos Tommy and David Bowies Ziggy Stardust. One thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot, Toledo notes. I didn039t want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it039s like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance. Selfproduced by Toledo and recorded, for a change, mostly in analog, The Scholars is definitely the most bottom up of any project that we039ve done, says Ives, who was urged by Toledo to take ownership of the guitar work and sound design for the album. I039ve started nerding out a lot more in the last couple of years about designing sounds more deliberately, rather than just using your lucky gear and hoping for the best. It was really rewarding, being able to sculpt things a lot more specifically, and being able to layer things in more of a dense way and have more of an active design role in how things come across more than any previous album.While The Scholars has some of the most expansive Car Seat Headrest songs to date, including the nearly 19minute long Planet Desperation, and opener CCF Im Gonna Stay With You, they know how to make each part of the journey compelling, filling the runtimes with unexpected turns and enervating hooks. And moments like the jaunty The Catastrophe Good Luck With That Man show they havent lost their ability to write a shortandsweet single that chimes like classic 60s folk pop, updated for the present. Having gone through their trials, Car Seat Headrest are now ready for the next chapter in their career. It will astonish both longtime supporters and new fans. While Car Seat Headrest started as Toledo039s solo project, it is now fully a band. What we039ve been doing more of in recent years is just taking the pulses of each other. Weve really been leaning into that sort of cocoon that started off with the pandemic years and just turned into this special space that we were creating all on our own, says Toledo. I was coming out of it as a solo project and it always just felt like it was in pieces. There039s the album we039re working on, and then there039s a live show that we039re doing, and then there039s everything in between. And it didn039t really feel to me like things got in sync in an inner feeling way until this record, with that internal communal energy. And it039s become that band feeling for me in a much more realized way. That039s been a big journey. It is a journey that listeners will want to embark on again and again as they absorb and discover the rich depths and clanging resonances of The Scholars.