Car Seat Headrest on ‘The Scholars’ and inspiration behind the album

Car Seat Headrest. Photo credit: Carlos Cruz

Jordan Royal (Sonic Alien 4ZZZ) caught up with Ethan Ives of Car Seat Headrest to chat about their thirteenth studio album, ‘The Scholars’, how it felt to write again after five years, and the expansive narrative based songs.

Interview aired on Sonic Alien 4ZZZ 14 May 2025.

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Jordan: I'm joined by Ethan, the guitarist in Car Seat Headrest, having a chat about The Scholars, the band's 13th album. Thank you so much for having the time to chat with me. It's so awesome to be able to chat with you. Thank you so much.

Ethan: Thank you. It's great to be here.

Jordan: Of course. This is your first studio album in five years. There was a bit of stop and start with COVID and different things happening. So what was it like stepping back into the writing process for you after such a long time away? Did it feel familiar or a bit different?

Ethan: You know, yeah, it was a little bit weird because we had such a long pause after the last album. It kind of gave us an opportunity to kind of like re-evaluate the way that we had been doing albums in the past and kind of do a really different process. So it was exciting to do it so differently, but also it was kind of daunting to kind of be figuring it out for the first time again, because it was a much more collaborative writing process. It was a lot more open-ended. It was a lot more based on kind of jams and kind of band just kicking things back and forth. And so it was really unfamiliar for us because songs got built up in this much more kind of, you know, open-ended way. And they came together a lot more piecemeal than we were used to, which was kind of daunting because it was kind of like there was some trial and error of just figuring out, you know, a new process for the first time. But it was really exciting because we all, as individuals, we all contributed more. And so I think we were all really engaged, just wanting to throw our own stuff into the pod and wanting to be more collaborative with kicking ideas back and forth. So that part of it was really, you know, energising.

Jordan: That's awesome because I did read somewhere that Will had said that it was sort of the first time that the band felt really like in sync, that it was sort of a shared creative venture rather than like maybe more so his solo project. So that's a really interesting insight as well. Thanks so much for that. But The Scholars, I mean, it maybe plays into that as well for you, but The Scholars is very expansive and theatrical. Was there a moment in the studio where it really clicked for you guys that you guys were maybe venturing into new territory, trying something new, making a different sound?

Ethan: Well, the sort of the sort of like rock opera structure of it was actually something that we kind of started with. That was something that we kind of had at the beginning that we knew we wanted to do. And that was kind of an idea of Will's that he had brought to the table. Like he had the beginnings of some songs and a bunch of demos and things. And he basically, when we started the writing process, he was like, hey, I want this to be kind of like a selection of characters. And each song will be kind of a vignette where it might be a slightly different flavour for each song. And it's kind of, you know, there's an overarching story, but then each song is kind of this own little short story. And so we, you know, we didn't know a lot about what all the songs would sound like, but we knew that going in that we'd have kind of that structure. But it's a really freeing structure, too, because it's like knowing that every song is going to be kind of a standalone piece that will be written from a different person's perspective and maybe can have a it made it feel really open-ended. Like every song felt like its own little sandbox where we could try different things out and they didn't all have to have exactly the same sound.

Jordan: That is so awesome. I love when bands like sort of create like a world or a narrative. So it leads into my next question is the album is obviously very narrative based. It's set in a university that has different characters. How did you approach writing the guitar to sort of like match this story? Well, did you try and write the guitar to serve the story in any way?

Ethan: Kind of. Yeah, it was more like I wasn't really thinking about the you know, I wasn't thinking about like plot details so much, but definitely because each song did represent like a different kind of point of view. It allowed for a sort of freedom to try kind of almost like a different sub-genre on every song. So every song would be like, oh, you know, maybe this flavour will fit for this mood or maybe this, you know, there's like kind of a surfy vibe on one song or kind of like a gothy eighties vibe on one song or like not going too far in any one direction, but kind of just like trying out little different flavours on each song and seeing which ones were appropriate. And that was really fun for me just as a I really like digesting and analysing like different guitar tones and different flavours of guitar. And I like to like kind of catalog those in my head. So the ability to kind of like roll through my internal Rolodex of like, okay, what types of guitar sound do I know which ones would fit on this song, you know?

Jordan: That's amazing. It's amazing. It does feel like I mean, when you're listening to it, it does feel like so many different albums in one and different things coming in and playing a part in every different song. It must be really freeing as a musician and a guitarist to be able to explore so many different things within the album. It sort of takes me to my next question again is that the album draws from crowd rock textures, different like roaring power chords. And also you mentioned before, like rock opera influences like The Who's Tommy, Bowie, Ziggy Stardust. Were they a really big part of like your musical upbringing as well? And how were there any specific ways that you sort of filtered that into your writing process?

Ethan: Yeah, I mean, I didn't really grow up with The Who, but definitely like Ziggy Stardust and like all the Pink Floyd albums were like super important to me growing up. And especially like as a guitarist, like they influenced me a lot. There was definitely a really, really big pool of those things kind of all mixing together when we were writing the album. And I definitely was like thinking about different types of concept album because there's like, you know, I feel like people tend to talk about concept albums as like kind of this like one thing, but really it's like there's lots of different kinds. And there's like there's kind of a spectrum of, you know, narrative rigidity.

There's like something like ‘The Wall’, which like has a very linear plot structure and like every song is like this kind of like scripted beat that has to happen in a certain sequence. And I don't like writing in that mode quite so much. I really like concept albums where like there is a through line and a theme, but it's very, the songs can kind of stand on their own and you could maybe listen to them out of order and it would still kind of work.

I mean, you know, I always, I know they never intentionally wrote it this way, but I always thought of like Talking Heads music as being kind of like concept based because like David Byrne creates such a character through his vocals that I always kind of pictured it being like the same guy in all these songs, like having these very different adventures. And so we tried to approach it more from the perspective of there being a story and there being definitely like a connective tissue between the songs, but not plotting it so rigidly that it has to be this very like three act structure.

Jordan: The record, I have to say, is, there are some really long, expansive, like, compositions. It's really fun to listen to. I love listening to, like, long, sprawling songs. But the track Point of Desperation, in particular, gets up to 18 minutes long, which is crazy. You could like four or five songs in there. Is there something that draws you to writing these extended structures? And how do you sort of approach writing the guitar for like a four minute song versus an 18 minute long song?

Ethan: Yeah, well, it's like every song kind of, you know, songs kind of arrive at the length that they are kind of sometimes for different reasons. Sometimes it's like you have the ending of a song and you're like, I know this ending is going to sound really cool, but it only will sound cool if if there's like a significant ramp up to this point. So it's like I need to backfill all the other stuff that gets me to this point. So some songs are kind of like that. I know Will has said that for Gethsemane, that was kind of his process for arranging that was like he knew he had almost like the end and he was like, okay, I just need to get there.

‘Point of Desperation’ was kind of a really different thing where that song is also very long, but it kind of got there for different reasons. It was a lot of bits and pieces and demos. And like you said, it is like four different songs that all kind of ended up getting mashed together and they were written independently of each other. But we got to a point in the album where we had all this stuff still floating around and a lot of it hadn't quite found a home yet, but we still wanted to use it. Like there was an entire song called ‘World War’ that I had kind of been working on for the album that it just wasn't quite working. And that ended up becoming the whole front part of that song, like maybe the first few minutes. And it was just became this kind of potluck of like all these different bits of songs that we had been working on that kind of got Frankenstein together into this like huge medley. And that came together very late in the album. That was like maybe the last song I think that got finished. And so it's like a different, you know, every song is kind of an individual process. Most of the time you're not sitting down thinking, oh, I need to write something that's 18 minutes long. But sometimes it just kind of becomes a natural byproduct of the material you're working with.

Jordan: Yeah, because you mentioned sort of towards the start of the interview that like, I guess, like that jamming sense and how things came together through jamming. So I was like, I wonder if that 18 minute long song came together through just like a jam. But it sounds like different, like Frankenstein, as you said, parts like thrown together. I love that analogy.

You guys are going on tour soon for The Scholars, which is very exciting, hitting a bunch of spots across the US. Is there a particular track that you're really excited to explore live and play live?

Ethan: I'm really excited to do ‘Catastrophe’, just because that's the that was the most fun for me. I'm a very violent guitar player. And that's that one gives me the biggest outlet to be violent. ‘Gethsemane’ I'm really stoked about, just because I really, really like the epic feel of it. And there's lots of different textures and tones that I get to kind of cycle through. They're really, really fun. And honestly, ‘Planet Desperation’, I'm really stoked about. I'm really curious to see how people react to something that long in a live environment.

Jordan: Yeah, true. I was thinking like that, like some of the longest songs on the album would be really fun to play live, but like the audience reaction would be interesting.

Thank you so much for your time. It's been awesome having a chat with you. So thank you so much for hopping on the call and having a chat. It's been great.

Ethan: Yeah, for sure. The questions were lovely. Thank you.

Jordan: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.

Listen to ‘The Scholars’ below.