#9 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Sufjan Stevens

January 23, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Much like yesterday’s Car Seat Headrest album, Sufjan Stevens’ latest solo work, The Ascension, is the worst album he’s produced since I started the Top 31: his last album, Carrie & Lowell, was #4 in 2015, and The Age of Adz was #3 in 2010. And once again, in any other year The Ascension would have ranked much higher than #9. It suffers not from being less-than-great, but instead from having been released in a year of a great outpouring of other stellar music.

This new album is a stark departure from the quiet and contemplative Carrie & Lowell. Dense and fully electronic, The Ascension is better defined as an extension of Adz, which was a real surprise to me and everyone else when it was released back in 2010. If you’re a longtime fan of Stevens, you won’t be surprised in the slightest. But if you’re still clinging to Lowell, or even farther back to the likes of 2005’s Illinois, you might wonder what the hell is going on with this new album.

Turns out, the album sounds like it does out of necessity: Stevens was in the process of moving from his longtime home in Brooklyn to a more remote spot in the Catskills during the recording of the album, and his stringed instruments were packed away, out of reach. Whether that was a conscious effort, a made up constriction, or entirely true is besides the point. Stevens is the master of his musical domain, and that domain is not bound by the soft and intimate analog world.

All of Sufjan’s deeply personal refrains are here, such as “I wanna die happy” repeated twenty-some-odd times in the song “Die Happy,” or “…I was asking far too much of everyone around me,” from the absolutely gorgeous title song. You’ll find your self swimming in those same waters as on past albums, but this time with day-glow paint and UV lights shining on the pool. If you’ve not listened to Sufjan in the past, I’ll first ask “why not?!” and then happily point you to this album; it’s a perfectly fine point to dive into his warm embrace, something much needed throughout all of 2020.

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1. Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee
2. Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
3. Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers
4. folklore + evermore by Taylor Swift
5. Untitled (Black Is) + Untitled (Rise) by Sault
6. RTJ4 by Run The Jewels
7. Shore by Fleet Foxes
8. Serpentine Prison by Matt Berninger
9. The Ascension by Sufjan Stevens
10. Making a Door Less Open by Car Seat Headrest
11. Dreamland by Glass Animals
12. A Hero’s Death by Fontaines D.C.
13. Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz
14. Mordechai + Texas Sun EP by Khruangbin
15. Introduction, Presence by Nation of Language
16. Free Love by Sylvan Esso
17. Miss Anthropocene by Grimes
18. 3.15.20 by Childish Gambino
19. Women In Music Pt. III by HAIM
20. The Third Mind by The Third Mind
21. Superstar by Caroline Rose
22. Impossible Weight by Deep Sea Diver
23. We Will Always Love You by The Avalanches
24. Ultra Mono by IDLES
25. Visions of Bodies Being Burned by clipping.
26. Thin Mind by Wolf Parade
27. The Loves of Your Life by Hamilton Leithauser
28. Palo Alto (Live) by Thelonious Monk
29. color theory by Soccer Mommy
30. Fall to Pieces by Tricky
31. Quarantine Casanova by Chromeo

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#10 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Car Seat Headrest

January 22, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Making a Door Less Open by Car Seat Headrest

You’ve made it! Welcome to The Bacon Review’s Top 10 of 2020. At #10, we have recent Bacon Top 31 stalwarts Car Seat Headrest, with their worst album of the last five years. No, that’s not a joke. Making a Door Less Open, the band’s twelfth studio album and fourth I’ve listened to, is not as good as their last two albums, Teens of Denial, which hit #7 back in 2016, and Twin Fantasy (Face to Face), which made the top 3 in 2018. It’s pretty awesome when a band’s lesser work is still good enough to crack the Top 10 in a given year.

Making a Door Less Open sounds quite a bit different, musically. The band’s lead singer and principal songwriter Will Toledo still has his signature lazy delivery, but the instrumentation he’s built behind his lyrics sounds quite different. Where the past albums sounded fully analog, the new stuff is clearly digital, with interesting cuts and splices thrown on top of computer-driven alteration of Toledo’s voice and guitars, and a repetitive drum beat backing it all up. A couple songs devolve quickly into noise-rock that is difficult to crack into, but when it works, it knocks your socks off.

The opening tracks, “Weightlifters” and “Can’t Cool Me Down,” (shown in the above lyric video), are fairly typical Toledo, complete with highly repetitive choruses. But then the album shifts into entirely new and confusing territory, evidence of a man who’s cracking under the pressure his fame has brought upon him. Whereas his past work has been about how difficult the lives of the people around him have been, Door is a more personal, present affair. “Hollywood,” for instance, is intense and cacophonic, where we hear Toledo screaming “Hollywood makes me wanna puke!” over and over again.

Further evidence of Toledo’s inner turmoil is revealed in the few non-Car Seat Headrest things that surfaced between this and the last album. For instance, Toledo along with drummer Andy Katz created a fully electronic side project called 1 Trait Danger, led by Toledo wearing a fully-covering gas mask with LED-activated eyes, and full albums and an entirely fictitious backstory created for the band’s Bandcamp page. It’s a chameleon-like shift reminiscent of Beck’s stranger departures over the past couple decades. Probably should have left that door closed.

Making a Door Less Open, however, is well worth your time. If you’ve not listened to Car Seat Headrest in the past, start with Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) before diving into this one. But if you’re a fan, Door is an interesting shift that I think you’ll love.

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#3 on the 2018 Bacon Top 31 — Car Seat Headrest

January 29, 2019 by Royal Stuart

Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) by Car Seat Headrest

Here we are at the top 3! This year was, as has happened in a few years past, difficult to pin down. But when this has happened in the past, it’s been a matter of “nothing is jumping out at me as a strong #1.” This year is different, in that there were so many phenomenal albums by bands that I love, they could all have qualified as #1 for the year. But countdown lists can’t have ties, especially not at the top, so here we are at very strong #3 with Car Seat Headrest.

You may remember Car Seat Headrest from their last album, Teens of Denial, which hit #7 in 2016. Hailing from Seattle, the band’s lead singer/songwriter Will Toledo is a wordsmith of the highest order. Writing very close to his heart, Toledo spins tales of typical rock & roll fare — love, loss, family — but with a reality seldom encountered in today’s songs.

Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) is not 100% new material for the band — it’s actually a complete re-recording and reworking of an album Toledo put out in 2011, five albums ago. I have not heard the original Twin Fantasy, but given this is a re-recording and reworking of that album, I’ll feel safe not calling it a rerelease (and thereby disqualifying it from Top 31 contention).

There are so many great songs on this album, but unfortunately only one video, for the song “Nervous Young Inhumans,” featured above. I implore you to listen to my favorite track from the album, “Bodys,” a song I’ve bounced around to in my living room with my daughter in my arms many many times. There’s a lot of repetition of lyrics on the album, to the point where the sentiment of the line (such as “Stop smoking, we love you”) takes on new and deeper meaning. It’s quite effective at drawing out emotion and connection, but I can’t quite put my finger on why.

I had the pleasure of seeing Car Seat Headrest for the first time last year, and it was well worth the wait. My god, this band can rock. Teens of Denial was a great album on its own, but Twin Fantasy is a whole other level. Check it out ASAP.

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4. Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe
5. The Horizon Just Laughed by Damien Jurado
6. Chris by Christine and the Queens
7. Wanderer by Cat Power
8. Tell Me How You Really Feel by Courtney Barnett
9. The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs by Wye Oak
10. Ruins by First Aid Kit
11. Cocoa Sugar by Young Fathers
12. Loner by Caroline Rose
13. Big Red Machine by Big Red Machine
14. I’ll Be Your Girl by The Decemberists
15. The More I Sleep the Less I Dream by We Were Promised Jetpacks
16. Joy as an Act of Resistance by IDLES
17. Hell-On by Neko Case
18. Superorganism by Superorganism
19. Living in Extraordinary Times by James
20. Thank You for Today by Death Cab for Cutie
21. Black Panther: The Album by Kendrick Lamar
22. Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film) by Thom Yorke
23. Merrie Land by The Good, the Bad & the Queen
24. Room 25 by Noname
25. WARM by Jeff Tweedy
26. God's Favorite Customer by Father John Misty
27. Vessel by Frankie Cosmos
28. For Ever by Jungle
29. Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz
30. Remain in Light by Angélique Kidjo
31. This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet by Moonface

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2009-2017 Top 31s

#7 on the 2016 Bacon Top 31

January 06, 2017 by Royal Stuart

Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest

The album at #7 has a strong contender for my favorite song of the year. “Fill in the Blank,” by Seattle’s own Car Seat Headrest, is an anthemic, angsty, hard rocking song that has all the makings of an instant classic: fantastic chorus, insanely building bridge, loud guitars and quiet pauses. The song makes a Kramer-esque entrance on Teens of Denial, bursting into the room and causing you to jolt upright. (There’s only a lyric video available for that song, so I chose to go with “Vincent” to feature above, another great song from this album.)

Car Seat Headrest is the brainchild of Will Toledo, who is only 24, from Leesburg, Virginia, and Teens of Denial is his twelfth album release. But it’s only his first album produced via traditional studio processes, with a full band, released on Matador records. I’m not sure when he moved to Seattle, but we’re lucky to have him.

This album feels very Lou Reed, Strokes, Sex Pistols and Joy Division all while somehow being immediately current. It slams your head against the wall and makes you like it. The previous release, Teens of Style — the first Matador release — is more of a compilation of previously recorded Car Seat Headrest songs, rerecorded and reimagined. It’s good, too, but it’s no Denial. How one can record and release 11 albums and only on his twelfth really nail it is beyond me. I can only believe that he’s just getting started, here at 24, ready to take on the world.

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8. Goodness by The Hotelier
9. The Mountain Will Fall by DJ Shadow
10. Junun by Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood & The Rajasthan Express
11. The Hope Six Demolition Project by PJ Harvey
12. Amen & Goodbye by Yeasayer
13. Sea of Noise by St. Paul & The Broken Bones
14. You Want It Darker by Leonard Cohen
15. Painting Of A Panic Attack by Frightened Rabbit
16. Why Are You OK by Band Of Horses
17. Not To Disappear by Daughter
18. Sunlit Youth by Local Natives
19. I Had a Dream That You Were Mine by Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam
20. ★ by David Bowie
21. Farewell, Starlite! by Francis and the Lights
22. This Unruly Mess I’ve Made by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
23. LNZNDRF by LNZNDRF
24. Puberty 2 by Mitski
25. Light Upon the Lake by Whitney
26. A Corpse Wired for Sound by Merchandise
27. Away by Okkervil River
28. case/lang/veirs by case/lang/veirs
29. Love Letter for Fire by Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop
30. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future by Underworld
31. Preoccupations by Preoccupations