After launching a cryptic "WebQuest" that caused flashbacks to high school, Will Toledo's indie rock project Car Seat Headrest have announced The Scholars, the band's first studio album in five years and follow-up to 2020's Making a Door Less Open. The Scholars arrives May 2 through Matador Records.
Self-produced by Toledo and recorded mostly in analog, The Scholars — which was inspired by the apocryphal poem by "Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo" — is set at the fictional college campus or Parnassus University. Described as a rock opera, the record's songs follow the students and staff of the university, whose "travails follow a loose narrative of life, death and rebirth."
After coming down with COVID-19 and canceling multiple tour dates in 2022, Toledo suffered a period of illness and discovered he had a histamine imbalance, and began following meditation practices and strains of Buddhism that led to a "dedication to following spiritual practices" that informed the forthcoming album. "There's a part of me who's still a kid who likes a sick day from school," Toledo shared. "You get to lay around and contemplate the details of life."
Commenting on the spiritual nature of the album, Toledo continued, "I think that one of the big blessings l've been given is that I never saw the institution of church as being the place that holds God." He added, "When you look at the history of the Christian Church, it is always constantly breaking open and shattering and giving rise to new forms. Whether you call it spirituality or not, I can't help but see that in society nowadays with queer culture, with the furry culture, with the bonding together of youth for something that is more than what we knew and what we grew up with."
In addition to the album, the band have also released the record's first single "Gethsemane" and an accompanying shoft film.
The band shared of the track:
Rosa studies at the medical school of Parnassus University. After an experience bringing a medically deceased patient back to life, she begins to regain powers suppressed since childhood, of healing others by absorbing their pain. Each night, instead of dreams, she encounters the raw pain and stories of the souls she touches throughout the day. Reality blurs, and she finds herself taken deep into secret facilities buried beneath the medical school, where ancient beings that covertly reign over the college bring forth their dark plans.
The band will be supporting the new record with a handful of US shows. See the tracklist and watch the music video for "Gethsemane" below.
The Scholars:
- CCF (I'm Gonna Stay with You)
- Devereaux
- Lady Gay Approximately
- The Catastrophe (Good Luck with That, Man)
- Equals
- Gethsemane
- Reality
- Planet Desperation
- True/False Lover