Car Seat Headrest's Will Toledo re-imagines the band's breakout on Teen of Denial: Joe's Story. On the original record, Toledo used the name "Joe" as a stand-in for himself. Revisiting Teens in the run-up to it's 10th year, he felt compelled to give Joe a backstory and began tweaking the album to tell that tale. "The resulting work feels more like the album Teens of Denial was meant to be," Will Toledo writes in a new message to fans. "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."Early this year, the group returned to the studio with producer Steve Fisk to update accordingly -tweaking lyrics and recording new tunes in the "Denial-style," including the optimistic and anthemic "Joe Drives Again." The result retains Teens's dark edge and youthful cynicism, but promises a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Toledo writes, "I'm so grateful that this is a work that people have kept coming to, and I hope that 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 it if were like this?'"
