The gifted introvert
Will Toledo started out recording his songs at home and posting them online. Set to perform at Auckland’s Laneway Festival, his band Car Seat Headrest now has a cult following, writes
Grant Smithies.
Self-described ‘‘nervous young man’’ Will Toledo started making music in his bedroom as a teenager. First, he would lay down a bed of raw electric guitars and lo-fi synths via the crappy built-in mic on his computer. Then he would drive the family stationwagon to sparsely populated car parks around Williamsburg, Virginia, climb into the back seat, and record the vocals on to his laptop.
‘‘My room at home had real thin walls and not much privacy,’’ he tells me from that same house. Now 24, Toledo lives in Seattle these days, but he’s at home on holiday when I call, visiting his parents.
‘‘So I would drive to the far corners of big parking lots outside stores people didn’t attend very often, or church parking lots on days when there were no services.’’
In part, it was peace and privacy he was after, but Toledo also wanted to prove that great records could be made anywhere.
‘‘You get engineers and producers talking lovingly about the acoustics of certain studios, but I always felt like the location of a recording had no effect whatsoever on its quality. It’s more about the people making the music, so I’d place myself in these environments no one else would use, and record songs into my laptop in the back seat.’’
Great songs, as it happens. Insightful, funny, invariably angsty, and occasionally wise, with lyrics and backing tracks stuffed with cunning references to bands he loved: REM, Pavement, Jandek, Nirvana, The Who, Radiohead, Swans.
The audience, for his early songmaking sessions? Just those empty stationwagon seats, their headrests jutting up like listening heads. Hence Toledo’s heroically mundane band name, Car Seat Headrest.
And as a bookish teenager with a vivid imagination and turbulent emotional life, there was no shortage of source material for songs; Toledo self-released 11 albums online via Bandcamp, in just four years.
‘‘I wanted to make records people could latch on to at a deeper level than most of the music I see being made these days,’’ he tells me in a slow monotone.
‘‘All the records I grew up on had already lasted decades before I even discovered them – people like The Beatles, The Who and, later, Pink Floyd. Between those three bands somewhere were planted the seeds of my own songwriting abilities, and I still listen to all those bands regularly. That music has really held up over time, so it made sense for me to try to make songs like that, too. And people have really responded to that.’’
Indeed. Over the last year or so, Toledo has been anointed as nothing less than the newly risen lord and saviour of indie guitar music. ‘‘The voice of a generation that doesn’t want a voice’’ reckoned online mag The Brag, while Popmatters called him ‘‘indie rock’s next great hope’’. Not to be outdone, Consequence of Sound proclaimed Toledo ‘‘The Indie Rock Hero We’ve Been Waiting For’’.
After releasing two albums on major American independent label Matador, his previous cult following has blossomed into a substantial global audience. Toledo now fronts a band rather than recording solo, and is one of the chief drawcards for Auckland’s Laneway Festival, at Albert Street Precinct on January 30.
It’s hard to tell how he feels about his burgeoning fame. Though his songs are strafed with wit, Toledo is your archetypal ‘‘Serious Young Man’’ in person, with little perceptible sense of humour. He speaks of his work with neither warmth nor hostility: a gifted introvert who suddenly finds himself squirming slightly under the spotlight, being interrogated about his life and music then, often, misrepresented. ‘I always felt like the location of a recording had no effect whatsoever on its quality. It’s more about the people making the music, so I’d place myself in these environments no one else would use, and record songs into my laptop . . .’