Will Toledo makes music the way the rest of us eat and sleep: daily, as though doing so is the most natural thing in the world.
Despite the fact he has only released two studio albums under the Car Seat Headrest moniker, to take a trip over to his Bandcamp page is to stumble down an over-stuffed rabbit hole, and he has a dizzyingly packed back catalogue of self-released records.
Given how long he’s been playing this particular game, it’s perhaps understandable that he talks about his writing process with consideration and care. He is a man who thinks a lot about his work, and even though he argues his approach to writing melody is free-form, he has a deep understanding of the way his own brain operates.
“For me, making music is sort of a less conscious process,” he says in his deep, slow rumble. “I’m just generating material without thinking about it too much – just trying to make it sound good. But when I’m writing lyrics, it’s more of a mental process. I’m thinking about the larger strokes and what I want to be saying.”
To that end, Teens Of Denial, released early this year, is a diligently and obsessively constructed work: every single one of the record’s multi-coloured tracks was planned out long in advance. “My original vision of it was achieved, which I think is one of the reasons why it took so long to make,” Toledo says. “It took almost three years from when I finished the last record [Nervous Young Man] and when I finished Teens Of Denial.
“I knew that I wanted it to be this classic rock record,” he continues. “I wanted shorter songs with simpler arrangements than I had been working on previously. So it just took quite a long time to generate the kind of content that I wanted to fit with that. I had to get used to a new way of working. This one in particular was one where … the strictness of those limitations meant it took a while to finish.”
Though it would be a stretch to describe Teens Of Denial as a concept record, it does feature a named character, ‘Joe’, and it mines Toledo’s usual thematic territory – getting drunk, feeling lonely, depression and anxiety – within a more precise framework.
“There’s definitely an overarching concept to it,” Toledo agrees. “I try to design all of my records like that, to a degree. Both musically with themes that I repeat, and lyrically as well. There’s a little bit of a narrative to it, I think, even if it’s just a mental or conceptual one. It’s a year in a life, and it’s definitely got that specific structure to it.”
Such an approach is markedly different to Toledo’s label debut, Teens Of Style, a sort of ‘best of’ collection in which the musician re-recorded versions of songs he had put out independently over the years. “That one was a little looser, but stitching all the songs together, I did try to generate a cohesiveness to it,” he says. “There are lyrical changes that reflect that – the record was about me just getting into the music industry and experiencing it for the first time. It was a crossroads for me, that record. There’s a conceptual link on that record: it’s about feeling both the aged quality of the older material and looking on towards something.”
Indeed, Toledo says the machinations of the music industry have affected a lot of what he does these days. “My career has changed in general, which has affected the way that I write,” he says. “I try not to let it change my artistic ideas, my ideas of what art should be. But, I mean, I think artists should try and write something appropriate to the phase of career that they’re in. Now I’m kind of in a boom time, so my writing is reflecting that and I’m working with an intentional commercial appeal right now. It seems like a good time for that.
“Actually, this month I’ve been working on a couple of radio edits. I just did a radio edit for [Teens Of Denial’s] ‘Drunk Drivers’ and we’ll see what happens with that. It’s just about exploring ways of intersecting art with a more commercial project. That’s something that has been interesting me more lately.”
Ultimately, such alterations to his writing style haven’t at all affected his productivity. To talk to Toledo is to talk to a man who is finally getting paid well for something he would do for free. “Generating the content hasn’t been the problem,” he says. “It’s been a very eventful year for me, so that means there’s been lots to write about.
“I mean, the lifestyle in general has been kind of exhausting. When I’m on tour I’m just thinking about when I can get back to Seattle, and when I’m back in Seattle I’m thinking about the next time I go on tour. I mean, in some ways it’s actually more stressful being at home ’cause I’ve always got a lot of planning and little things to deal with.”
He laughs, perhaps remembering all the shit he’s currently meant to be doing. “I’ve got emails, and flights to book and hotels to book. When I’m on tour I can let it slide a little more.”
Laneway Festival 2017 is held atSydney College of the Arts onSaturday February 4. Car Seat Headrest also appearsat Oxford Art Factory on Wednesday January 25.Teens Of Denial is out now through Matador/Remote Control.
