Twin Fantasy and Deconstructing an album within an album
Originally uploaded in June 2023
In 2011 Will Toledo, under the moniker Car Seat Headrest, released the concept album Twin Fantasy, to minor critical acclaim and a small but dedicated fanbase.
In 2018 the four-man band Car Seat Headrest released the concept album Twin Fantasy, to major critical acclaim and modest mainstream success, as well as to a large and rabid fanbase.
Both of these albums are effectively the same - sharing the same songs, structure, cover art, instrumentation and basic intent - yet they operate as opposites to each other. 2011's Twin Fantasy, now renamed to include (Mirror to Mirror) is a fresh and fervent deconstruction of Will's quickly fading relationship with his lover. Its songs are raw and intense, waving between danceable ballads and intense melancholy. Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) meanwhile, is a cleaned up and matured album focused on the experience of trying to revisit a brief and emotionally resonant moment in Will's life, and the struggles that come out of it.
I could literally write about this album forever, jumping between a quintillion different topics that are all seamlessly tied into the fabric of the album. I obviously have some sort of word limit, so I will be limiting my focus to just the layout of the album, and how Will is able to create a narrative with just the layout of the album itself.
The album starts with a quick tune named My Boy (Twin Fantasy), a song with very few lyrics and a rapidly growing instrumentation that introduces you to the album with a bang. It leads then into the first real song of the album, and the one that the album is perhaps best known for, Beach Life-in-Death, a 13 minute monster with three distinct sections that go through Will's emotional state during the relationship, after the breakup, and his broader emotional turmoil. This song introduces the first motif of the album with the repeated lyrics "The ocean washed over/open your grave." This lyric broadly relates to the feeling of not being able to move on, with "the ocean" constantly resurfacing old emotions and memories that would be better off forgotten, or lost.
The album then continues into the one-minute ballad "Stop Smoking (We love you)" which leads directly into the next song "Sober to Death." This is the first downbeat song of the album, dealing with the emotional fallout of being in a long-distance, emotionally abusive relationship. Will goes from trying his best to reassure his lover to doubting everything they say to him, finding no solace in the fact that they make each other worse (bad lives make good stories) and ending the song with a repeated plea that, as long as they have each other, they won't be alone.
The next song, "Nervous Young Inhumans," is the most changed between the two albums. I will be focusing on the lyrics present in the 2011 version of the song, since they have the most direct parallels to be drawn upon.
"Nervous Young Inhumans" is a song about Will creating a character out of his partner, finding that the version of them that he's created is so specific and dominant that it clouds his true view of the person that he is in love with, and that his fantasy has become more real than the actual relationship that it's based on.
This song is then paralleled in two songs, "Bodys" and "Cute Thing," which both focus on the anxiety and excitement that comes with meeting someone in person for the first time. Bodys focuses on the fact that, despite seemingly being in love, Will knows so little about the person that he's in love with and how his fear and anxiety over meeting them is so overpowering that it can make enjoyable things terrifying. Then, with Cute Thing, Will focuses on the unabashed queer teenage joy that can come from finally meeting with friends, as well as the self-destructive tendencies of partying and how it can feel totally alienating to have fun while feeling bad.
The real parallels, I believe, start with the eighth song on the album, "High to Death." Beyond the naming convention drawing a direct parallel with the four song "Sober to Death," this song also includes a reversal/recall to Stop Smoking with the lyrics, "Keep smoking, I still love you, but I don't want to die." Will is desperate to stay with their partner and has given up on trying to change them, instead pleading with them to stay the way they are as long is it means they stay together.
From this point forward, the relationship is on its way out. Will, in his moment of divine sadness brought on by a bad high, has to make the decision to leave. The relationship is the night, a suffocating darkness that blinds him and leaves him begging not to die. The end of the relationship, the daylight, is a "Hell" that he can't stand to look at. Yet, at the end, he sits on the steps and accepts the day as it breaks.
We then get to "Famous Prophets," being the longest song on both albums (13 and 16 minutes respectively) and being the most changed between the two. This is the inverse of Beach Life-in-Death, being an honest condemnation of the relationship as it existed in the mental exhaustion it wrought. In both versions of the song, Will laments the person he thought he loved and comes to terms with the fact that, ultimately, their non-existence in reality. He waxes biblical about his moving on, the point at which his illusion shattered and how profoundly the wake-up call impacts him. The song is devastatingly loud, with the second-half switch bringing the emotional calamity of the fantasy into stark contrast with its reality in the moment. Here we see the return of multiple motifs - "The ocean" makes its return, dredging up the memories that Will has tried so hard to bury and forget. In (Stars) we get some direct references to the grave visual - "I could fill back in that grave, I could hammer in that nail... I could sing another song, I could watch that hammer swerve," making it clear that he finds this constant dredging up tiring and painful, and how he wishes to seal the grave forever and just move on. In (Stars) we also get a returning motif with the reincorporation of an unfinished track, "Painstar (If Heaven is full of people...)" which includes chopped up, broken and discordant samples from My Boy. Almost the entire song is used, save for the conspicuous absence of the lyrics "We won't be alone." Will and his partner are here, irreconcilably, apart. It's over.
But it's not over.
The final song on the album, Twin Fantasy (Those Boys) is the perfect sendoff following the emotional climax of Famous Prophets. Will steps away from the relationship in both versions, turning back and hoping that he, and his partner, might be able to look back on the positive moments of the relationship without malice. It's over, but the versions of him and them that exist now are static in their existence. Here, in the album, they are forever together in their dysfunction. He leaves the fantasy, but when he comes back they'll both still be there.
Twin Fantasy is one of the best examples of the album as an artform. With lyrical and instrumental motifs that constantly call back to earlier parts of the album, as well as albums before and after its own existence. No one song is solitary - they all function to constantly drive the narrative forward and add the emotional depth necessary to understand how the relationship felt as the album continues. You are present for the highs and lows, the slow cracking of the foundations of their love until it all comes apart with a devastating ending that drags both you and Will down into the darkness, only to eventually make it out and reflect on what once was but will never be again.