100 Club,London
Will Toledo looks like an honours student but he delivers his songs about depression and prom night DMT trips with intoxicating assurance“We’ve never had a good present in London, mutters Will Toledo, or Seattle’s acknowledge to the question: what if McLovin rocked? Delivering songs about depression,small-town ennui and prom night DMT trips with the empty-faced snarl of an honours student lying to his parents, he looks anything but the future of US rock, or yet sounds precisely that.
As Car Seat Headrest,Toledo not only set the model for contemporary DIY success – from 2010 he solo-recorded and self-released 12 albums and EPs on Bandcamp before Matador signed him for recent albums Teens of Style and Teens of Denial – but also its sonic blueprint. Tonight’s intoxicating 10-song set picks at American alt-culture like Boris Johnson at an all-you-can-quote buffet of misleading EU statistics: Pavement’s wonky slacker grunge, Beach Boys psychedelia, or the new wave jitters of the Only Ones and Talking Heads,the urbane insolence of LCD Soundsystem or the Walkmen. CSH share the neo-grunge indulgences of Diiv too – witness the 11-minute alt-country swell The Ballad of the Costa Concordia, segueing into a sublime downbeat cover of Leonard Cohen’s Bird on the Wire.
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Source: theguardian.com