Cosmic Heroes and Average Joes: Teens of Denial, Five Years Later

Last spring, during the height of the pandemic in New York City, I binged Watchmen, both the original comic by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and the HBO miniseries sequel from Damon Lindelof. For the uninitiated, the stories take place in an alternate history in which masked vigilantes are real and the norm. It’s a rich world with incredibly complex characters, and isn’t afraid to tackle huge moral, philosophical, and psychological questions.

My personal favorite character from this universe is Dr. Manhattan, a former atomic physicist who, in an unfortunate workplace accident, is disintegrated. His consciousness remains, however, and it reassembles his scrambled atoms back into a humanoid form.  The end result is that Manhattan is no longer human, but a glowing blue, invincible god-person who can manipulate subatomic particles and exists outside of time and space. That means he can be in multiple places at once, and sees the past, present, and future simultaneously.

Car Seat Headrest’s 2016 album Teens of Denial turned 5 years old this week. It won’t turn you blue, and won’t give you the ability to split atoms or live in outer space (though there is a track titled “Cosmic Hero”). But, it’s still one of my all-time favorite records. Every time I listen to it I can’t help but feel a little bit like Dr. Manhattan, unstuck in time. Teens of Denial is a perfect encapsulation of teenage angst, both in terms of lyrical content and musical execution. In other words, what lead singer Will Toledo sings is almost as important as how he sings it. It’s also entirely immersive and deeply layered, often loud and intimate at the same time.

Because of this, when I listen to the album it’s easy to feel transported out of wherever or whatever I’m doing, and into all of the emotions and feelings I had in spades when I was a teenager, as if I’m in both the past and present at the same time.

I’m in my living room, working from home, and I press play. Suddenly it’s 2010, and I’m 17 years old in suburban Massachusetts. Toledo yelps “I am freaking out in my mind / in a house that isn’t mine/ my end goal isn’t clear / should not have had that last beer” on the opening verse of “Destroyed by Hippie Powers”, and I am in my friend’s basement, getting drunk for the first time, even though I haven’t actually left my couch in my apartment. On “Not What I Needed”, the album’s fifth track, Toledo sings “I have nothing but questions / I need answers, those would fill me up”. That’s an experience that should be familiar to any past or present young adult desperate to find their place in the world, and convinced that those answers will give their life purpose.  

There’s a lot of that sentiment in Teens of Denial. It’s raw; it asks big questions, and it beautifully navigates the constant adolescent struggle of trying to do the right thing but messing up anyway. Occasionally, it sounds like ramblings you might hear in a freshman’s college dorm room at 3 a.m. on a Friday night. It’s the type of record that echoes so many of the feelings humans have between the ages of 15-19 (and possibly beyond), before they figure out that, in the words of Mad Men’s Don Draper, “the universe is indifferent.”

Those emotions are what make this album so accessible, and that combined with its striking lyrical specificity give it an ability to teleport the listener to a different time and place. The challenge of growing up may vary from person to person, but make no mistake about it – growing up is a challenge for everyone.

“Connect The Dots (The Saga of Frank Sinatra)”, Teens of Denial’s penultimate song, boasts that the album’s protagonist will “be taken to the constellations” when he dies, yet a few lines later reminisces about a time when “We were heroes back home / We are heroes back home”. It’s another aspect of human nature that the record gets right (and is another unintentional similarity with Watchmen, as Dr. Manhattan’s storyline in the comic ends with him heading off to Mars, leaving behind a complicated heroic legacy). Even when our ambition lands us among the stars, we can’t help but to look back on our own individual origin stories. Nostalgia is a helluva drug, and that Car Seat Headrest is able to generate so much of it while also sounding new and unique speaks to what a triumph this album was, and continues to be.