Teens Of Denial by Car Seat Headrest

Teens of Denial, out on Matador on May 20, 2016, is the tenth Car Seat Headrest album and the first one Will Toledo ever made in a proper studio. Toledo started the project on his own in Leesburg, Virginia, and spent 2010 to 2014 tossing a dozen homemade records onto Bandcamp; now he had a band behind him, with Andrew Katz on drums and Ethan Ives on guitar and bass, plus an outside producer, Steve Fisk, minding the tape.

Following the Teens of Style compilation, this was his first set of new songs for the label, and it plays like a dam giving way: sprawling, wordy, guitar-heavy indie rock that swerves from mumbled confession to full-band roar. "Fill in the Blank" kicks the door in with a sneer, while "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales" takes its time and swells into a big, cathartic singalong. The album got a second life a decade later: re-recorded with minor changes, it came out again in May 2026.

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