For most indie rock bands, kickstarting your album rollout with an 11-minute rock epic is generally an eyebrow-raiser. But for Car Seat Headrest, this has become compos mentis by now.

"Gethsemane" is the first glimpse of new album The Scholars, which comes out May 2nd via Matador Records. The song is accompanied by a 13-minute short film directed by Andrew Wonder, which features lots of shadows, hooded mirror men straight out of Meshes of the Afternoon, and some Lynchian body horror.

Immerse yourself into it below:

The Scholars is Car Seat Headrest's bona fide take on the rock opera, taking place in the fictitious college campus Parnassus University. The band gave the following context of how the video and song relate to each other:

“Rosa studies at the medical school of Parnassus University. After an experience bringing a medically deceased patient back to life, she begins to regain powers suppressed since childhood, of healing others by absorbing their pain. Each night, instead of dreams, she encounters the raw pain and stories of the souls she touches throughout the day. Reality blurs, and she finds herself taken deep into secret facilities buried beneath the medical school, where ancient beings that covertly reign over the college bring forth their dark plans.”

The premise of The Scholars was initially sparked by frontman Will Toledo's longterm illness, which forced him to make an entire overhaul in his diet and lifestyle. This change opened the rabbit hole into Chan meditation and strains of Buddhism, informing a newfangled relationship with spiritual belief – one that seems to have manifested into the record's fictional storytelling.

“I think that one of the big blessings I've been given is that I never saw the institution of church as being the place that holds God,” Toledo says. “When you look at the history of the Christian Church, it is always constantly breaking open and shattering and giving rise to new forms. Whether you call it spirituality or not, I can't help but see that in society nowadays with queer culture, with the furry culture, with the bonding together of youth for something that is more than what we knew and what we grew up with.” 

Car Seat Headrest began as Toledo's prolific solo project, releasing a dizzying magnitude of lo-fi recordings via Bandcamp. After being signed to Matador, the band released two modern indie rock staples in Teens of Denial and the rebooted Twin Fantasy. Then Car Seat Headrest took a bold left turn on the outré electronic-driven Making A Door Less Open in the wake of the pandemic. The Scholars intends to veer the project into yet another novel direction.

“One thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot,” Toledo notes. “I didn't want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it's like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance."

The Scholars is out May 2. Preorder here. Full tracklist below:

1. CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)
2. Devereaux
3. Lady Gay Approximately
4. The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)
5. Equals
6. Gethsemane 
7. Reality
8. Planet Desperation
9. True/False Lover


Car Seat Headrest have announced a handful of US tour dates to support The Scholars. Check them out below:

05/16 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Block Party
06/07 New York, NY @ Governors Ball
06/28 Washington, DC @ The Anthem
07/12 Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
07/26 Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed (Fairgrounds)
08/08 Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek
09/12 Philadelphia, PA @ Highmark Skyline at the Mann Center
09/27 Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall
11/01 Oakland, CA @ The Fox

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