Will Toledo loves to tinker. Even in the early days of his project Car Seat Headrest—back before he became widely recognized as an indie-rock wunderkind—he occasionally re-worked old songs until they felt right. (Take, for example, “Oh! Starving,” originally recorded in 2010, then rerecorded it in 2012 and again in 2015.) But after signing to Matador Records, Toledo took things up a notch, releasing Teens of Style, a compilation of remakes picked from his greatest non-hits scattered across his Bandcamp recordings. Notably, he didn’t redo any songs from Twin Fantasy, 2011’s dense breakup chronicle that completists considered his magnum opus; instead, he’d go on to re-record the album in its entirety.
Toledo’s latest reworking takes on Car Seat Headrest’s breakthrough to the mainstream: 2016’s Teens of Denial. That record, their first album of original material for Matador, offered an infectious, literary introduction to a droll kid who wanted to carve out a spot in rock history. Part of Toledo’s charm came from how he remodeled his influences into something singular, working the lo-fi instincts of Elephant 6 artists and the Monkees’ pop harmonies into his emotional epics. He decided the narrator for Teens of Denial would be named Joe, in a nod to the character that appears throughout Daniel Johnston’s Hi, How Are You, and then sent the protagonist on a coming-of-age crash course. Along the way, Joe attended parties on DMT, proclaimed that he was heaven-bound, and concluded that a Vincent Van Gogh portrait accurately represented clinical depression.
It’s now been a decade since Teens of Denial, so Toledo and co. have decided to celebrate with Teen of Denial: Joe’s Story, a partial revision of their crowning achievement. For the most part, these tweaks take the focus off the album’s angsty strengths. Minor sonic adjustments—an updated guitar lick from Ethan Ives here, some additional horns there—are largely inconsequential, aside from the newly muted drum tones: For “Destroyed by Hippie Powers,” it sounds like drummer Andrew Katz swapped his snare drum for a giant novelty eraser. Some of Denial’s weaker cuts, “Not What I Needed” and “Unforgiving Girl (She’s Not An),” are nowhere to be found, having been replaced by two entirely new songs: “Optimistic Son,” which is built on an R.E.M.-like jaunt and Toledo’s falsetto backups, and “Joe Drives Again,” which offers a hopeful perspective on Joe’s future.
Joe's Story uses large chunks of Toledo’s original crackly, nasal vocals, which were always well-suited for this bildungsroman. Unfortunately, when present-day Toledo interjects here, he sounds beamed in from another planet. For this rendition of “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” Toledo overenunciates as if he’s giving a stump speech, undercutting the original version’s ennui. Bafflingly, Toledo also decided to remove all of the album’s swear words—in a since-deleted social media post, Katz claimed this was related to the vocalist’s religious practices—and the choice dulls some of Denial’s humor. Just take the succinct description of Joe as “a walking piece of shit,” which is swapped for “a dying alien” on the new “(Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn’t a Problem).” If you’re feeling generous, it’s a more compassionate portrayal of the protagonist; if you’re less charitable, it’s just clunky.
Since re-recording Twin Fantasy in 2018, Car Seat Headrest haven’t quite managed to recapture their combination of confident storytelling and roaring guitars—not by dabbling with electro-rock on 2020’s Making a Door Less Open, or even in attempting a full-throated rock opera on last year’s The Scholars. At its best, Joe’s Story acts as an advertisement for its prototype. As a teenager, I was struck by the unwieldy “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia,” whose narrator spirals out of control, describing an escalating struggle to act like an adult before arriving at an epilogue about holding a loved one close. For the Joe’s Story reworking, “Costa Concordia”—with the new title “The Ravenous House”—loses much of its bleary-eyed, dissatisfied specificity, replacing it with fresh, bland verses. But I’ve been thinking all week about its updated conclusion, where Toledo toys with the narrator’s perspective, offering Joe an outstretched arm: “If you decide that you want love,” someone tells the album’s narrator, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Its optimism is the one instance across Joe’s Story where Toledo convincingly changes his masterpiece.
