Car Seat Headrest Concert Review: Operatic in Scale and Emotion
Expertly woven together, Car Seat Headrest's set was nothing short of magical.To say that Car Seat Headrest is a band capable of evoking a strong emotional reaction in its listeners would be a disservice to the performance that struck the audience at MGM Music Hall at Fenway on Saturday, Sept. 27. The ineffable quality of their music — a blend of hopeful yet melancholic meditations on life and utterly raw, soul-baring narratives — which makes them so distinct as a band filled every corner of the packed venue.
Following a brief public service announcement encouraging audience members to shine their phone’s flashlight if they or someone near them needed help, lead singer and guitarist Will Toledo launched into a mostly uninterrupted performance of the band’s latest album “The Scholars.”
From start to finish, the band’s set reached profound heights, both in quality of songwriting and performance from Toledo, guitarist and vocalist Ethan Ives, drummer Andrew Katz, bassist Seth Dalby, and Ben Roth on synth. No moment felt sonically out of place, fitting neatly into the rock-opera narrative structure of the album from which they drew most of their tracks.
Throughout the night, Toledo and Ives played back and forth with their vocals, each eliciting a deeply felt vulnerability and guiding the crowd. The setlist spanned most of the range of Car Seat Headrest’s sonic variety and hit on feelings and themes which have been prevalent throughout the band’s discography all the way back to 2010.
At multiple points during the performance, members of the audience standing just behind the barricade closest to the stage were stopping and simply crying. Such was the emotional weight and sensuous impact of the band’s music.
Even tracks like the unreleased “The Colossus” — both a reflection on a trip Toledo made to New York and an unsettlingly poignant critique of work taking over life and a sense of distance from home — swept the audience along for the ride.
Some moments that drew from “The Scholars” were particularly transcendent amidst a wealth of excellent moments. After using the traditional folk song “900 Miles” as an intro, Toledo launched into the nearly 11 minute long “Gethsemane.” It was hard not to be enraptured by Car Seat Headrest’s ability to keep the crowd invested in the song.
As they moved into the second half of the track, just under Toledo’s voice you could clearly hear “You can love again if you try again” coming from the floor.
“Planet Desperation,” another epoch of a song at nearly 19 minutes long, also managed to use its length to its advantage. At no moment was the audience not captivated by the uniquely personal storytelling paired with excellent lighting design, all underpinned by exceptional performances by the entire band.
The only issue was a brief pause in the middle of the song as two members of the audience had to be helped out of the pit by staff due to an apparent injury. Many people had been crowd-surfing throughout the concert, making their way to the front to be helped out by MGM staff and sent back into the throng, though they often happened without a pause in the music.
At one point earlier in the night, a miscommunication from the crowd caused another brief pause, though no one needed assistance. These moments were less so detractions from the concert than they were briefly concerning as for the safety of the individuals impacted.
Toledo, and the crowd, quickly got back into “Planet Desperation,” picking up where they left off with “One more ‘Til the kids grow up alright.’”
The comparably short “Reality” was another standout. Ives’s vocals throughout the track were gut-wrenchingly delivered. The palpable hurt in his voice struck to the core, hammered home by operatic guitar riffs and hard-hitting drums through its midsection.
However, it was perhaps in the moments in which they deviated from “The Scholars” and drew from older material that the band hit their most soaring highs of the night.
Only 2016’s “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” made an appearance before the encore. But what an appearance it was. The track punched through the crowd, balancing its more and less energetic moments with remarkable tact.
Unfortunately, as the only song from earlier in Car Seat Headrest’s catalogue at that point in the set, a longtime fan might have missed some of the classic tracks which garnered the band its indie following in the first place. Then they returned for an encore.
“We lied, we do have more,” Toledo said.
What followed was a medley of songs stretching back into the annals of Car Seat Headrest’s discography, bringing together “Happy News for Sadness,” “Stoop Kid,” “Something Soon,” “Beach Life-in-Death,” and “My Boy (Twin Fantasy).” Expertly woven together, it was nothing short of magical.
These few songs managed to encapsulate the universality of the band’s music, crystallizing that particular moment in time as suspended and unique. There was nothing left but to be swept away. (In full transparency, “Beach Life-in-Death” made this reviewer cry.)
The actual finale, “True/False Lover,” was fitting for the set, capping off “The Scholars” and landing on a resoundingly upbeat note. For a song that ends by asking its subjects if they are proud, it’s clear that Car Seat Headrest deserves to answer the same way if asked about their performance on Saturday.
“Oh, yes, of course I’m proud.”
—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.