According to Pitchfork, Car Seat Headrest has re-recorded their album, Teens in Denial, into Teens in Denial: Joe’s Story, featuring brand new songs along with rearrangements and reinventions of songs from the original album. The American indie rock band Car Seat Headrest celebrated the 10th anniversary of one of their breakout albums and the release of a new rendition of that album today. The new album features two new songs, “Ravenous House” and “Joe Drives Again,” and new recordings and renditions of 10 of the songs from the original album. With two songs from the Teens in Denial, left off the new album, “The Ballad of Costa Concordia” and “Unforgiving Girl (She’s Not An).”
Car Seat Headrest founder and vocalist, Will Toledo, spoke at length about the choice to not only re-record the album, but to put a new spin on it. The singer said he wanted this new rendition to focus more intentionally on the story of Joe, a character who was created as an homage to American singer Daniel Johnston, who used the name to refer to himself in multiple of his songs.
“The resulting work feels more like the album Teens of Denial was meant to be,” he said. “I started thinking—who is Joe? And how do the songs, in the way they’re sequenced on the album, reflect what he’s going through? As I started asking this question, a story emerged with startling wholeness and clarity, like finding the foundations of an ancient city while digging in my backyard. As I kept digging, certain songs from the original album fell by the wayside, as they seemed misplaced in this new context; others asked for new lyrics, to fully give birth to the story contained in the music.”
The lyric changes included in Teens in Denial: Joe’s Story’s rendition of multiple of the original album’s songs, most notably included a total removal of profanity. The band’s drummer, Andrew Katz, claimed that this change was made due to Toledo’s “deep-dive into his religion.” The band as a whole, however, has not claimed religious conviction behind the changes, as the band’s guitarist Ethan Ives posted an Instagram story referencing this situation and stated that, “I am not, will never be, a christian.” A Discord account claiming to be a representative of Toledo shared a message about the situation allegedly from the singer, claiming the profanity was removed so the album “could be checked out from the library.” The band has not made an official statement on the matter.
Overarchingly, Toledo said that the changes made in this new album were intentionally meant to pull from memories of college life and “use the distance and additional perspective of ten years of life to shed a fuller light on the experience.”
“For anyone familiar with Teens, comparisons with the original will be inevitable, but I do hope that as much as possible, people can come to this album on its own terms, approaching it as a teen, hearing the music and story for the first time,” he said. “I believe music is an ongoing story, and albums don’t always do justice to its dynamic, ongoing nature. What gives it life is the new ears that hear it, and the new hearts that engage with it.”
Teens in Denial: Joe’s Story Tracklist
- Fill In The Blank
- Vincent
- Destroyed By Hippie Powers
- (Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn’t a Problem)
- Optimistic Son
- Drunk Drivers / Killer Whales
- 1937 State Park
- Joe Drives Again
- Cosmic Hero
- Ravenous House
- Connect the Dots (Song of Secretariat)
- Joe Goes to School
Photo Credit: Kalyn Oyer
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