encouraging everyone to check my internet archive lists. ive been organizing the car seat headrest/will toledo releated uploads and adding a couple myself. in case you want anything to be added you can contact me through my discord wannabe.coolkid
from asherwilliams27 and notcarseatheadrest via instagram
transcriptions under the cut
thanks to @milolovesbmc and @maddelyns-bo for the help
Letter on the left:
Hello.
To thank you for your support of Car Seat Headrest, we're sending you something new (and old) from the band that hasn't been announced yet. This is "Teen of Denial Joe's Story," a new recording from the same world as Teens of Denial to commemorate the original group's 10th anniversary this month. Some things will sound familiar, but you'll notice some changes too. You'll find along with a CD copy of Teen of Denial Joe's Story, a note written by Will Toledo providing some context on the new project.
Feel free to post this CD online, tagging Car Seat Headrest and Matador, to make everyone jealous. If you have anything else CSH related from your archives, we would love to see that too. Either by sharing on social media or sending to Matador directly via [email protected]
Thank you.
Matador Records
Second letter transcription:
Sometime last year it was suggested to me that we do something for the ten-year anniversary of Teens of Denial, so I started looking back on the albums to see what we might do. In spite of some of the songs being a regular part of my life for the [???] [???]. It wasn't a record I'd thought much about as a whole since it came out. Most of the songs I'd come up with over a two-year period at the end of my college days. When I was struggling a lot with symbolism and misplaced aggression. But by the time these songs were done, I was living in Washington, Car Seat Headrest was a full band with a record label, and in spite of the turmoil of this writing process the final album was really enjoyable for everyone to work on.
This time, looking back at the songs, I started to think there was a story being told through the album, though I'd never imagined it as being a narrative work. On *Hi, How Are You?* Daniel Johnston has used the name "Joe" in the titles of a few tracks - "No More Pushing Joe Around." "Keep Punching Joe" - as a sort of joke, a stand-in for himself. I borrowed the idea, and the name, for titling songs on *Denial*. This time, I started thinking - who is Joe? And how do the songs, in the way they're sequenced in the album, reflect what he's going through? As I started asking this question, a story emerged with startling wholeness and clarity, like finding the foundation of an ancient city whole digging in my backyard. As I kept digging, certain songs from the original album fell by the wayside, as they seemed misplaced in this new context; others asked for new lyrics to fully give birth to the story contained in the music.
The resulting work feels more like the album *Teens of Denial* was meant to be. When you're writing from a dark space, it's hard to have perspective on where you're at. This time, I could pull from memories of that darkness, and use the distance and additional perspective of ten years of life to shed a fuller light on the experience. Joe is a character going through some of what I experienced, and some of his own problems. Telling his story, and not just my own impressions of life at the end of the teen years, brought a new level of compassion and wholeness to the album. It gave us the opportunity to write new material in "Denial style", embracing a snappy and simple(ish) rock aesthetic, and in an additional blessing, we were able to team up once with Steve Fisk, a joy and inspiration to get back into the studio with after ten years. We mixed the material at his house in Tacoma and were constantly amused with the lack of divide between past and present, as we'd punch in vocal overdubs ten years later into the same gear, hearing my voice now running alongside a 2015 Will. For someone coming across this album or this band for the first time, this is how they'd hear the record, not as a relic of the past but as a new piece. It was immensely rewarding to experience that on our side.
For anyone familiar with *Teens*, comparisons with the original will be inevitable, but I do hope that as much as possible, people can come to this album on its own terms, approaching it as a teen, hearing the music and the story for the first time. I believe music is an ongoing story, and albums don't always do justice to it's dynamic, ongoing nature. What gives it life is the new ears that hear it, and the new hearts that engage with it. I'm so grateful that this is a work that people have kept coming to, and I hope this presentation does them honor with a fresh offering to the conversation. We've known that "it doesn't have to be like this", now we can wonder - "what if it were like this?"