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Car Seat Headrest on Talkin’ ‘Bout Their Generation With Ambitious New Rock Opera

Car Seat Headrest's 'The Scholars' is destined to rank with such rock epics as The Who's 'Quadrophenia' and Pink Floyd's 'The Wall.'

Indie rock shows are often the province of, as LCD Soundsystem ’s James Murphy said in the band’s “Tonite,” “the hobbled veteran of the disc shop inquisition” — the graying, largely male species of armchair critics who listen to Sirius XMU and love to lord their music discoveries over those less informed. The album is set in and around the fictional Parnassus University, populated by numerous characters — Beolco, Devereaux, Artemis and Rosa, among them — and narrated by The Chanticleer, a Greek symbol of courage and grandeur, and in Old French translates to “to sing clearly.” The antique-sounding names and places seem to be a conceit to show that past is prologue. “Gethsemane,” which approaches 11 minutes in length, is even getting a good amount of play on Sirius XMU, and the album’s pinnacle, “Reality,” in which Ives and Toledo share vocals — they liken it to Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” — could easily go on beyond its 11:14 run time.

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