Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars (digital outlets)

Labels “indie” and “alternative” haven't meant much since one-time indie bands (R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Husker Du) signed to major labels. But they are convenient shorthand.

Seattle-based Car Seat Headrest fronted by singer-writer Will Toledo have remained loyally indie and alt.rock, but for this impressive 13^th album they embrace one of rock's most demanding templates: the concept album.

It's an ambitious but blisteringly solid album loosely tracing the personalities and character-driven stories of a band called The Scholars -- musicians with names like Beolco, Devereaux and Chanticleer – who struggle with existential issues and matters of family and faith as well as touring, the van, backstage green room and worse: " 'We should start a band, lose all touch with the real world'. 'Good luck with that, man'. And that was the start of a major catastrophe.”

This is sheeted home in a more analogue version of Springsteen's grandeur (the eight minute opener CCF) and the heft of the Who's explosiveness (the voice of Rosa's Lizard Brain in the 11 minute Gethsemane: “I can do whatever the fuck I want to when I want to, you're only wearing my skin”).

Peppered by quiet passages (the bookends of damaged weariness of the 11 minute epic Reality) and the lyrical depths, multiple perspectives – and songs with titles like Gethsemane and Planet Desperation – demand almost academic attention. Have a pen and notebook handy.

In that The Scholars is more like Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (there are lines in Latin) than Bowie's Ziggy or the Who's Tommy.

And as with all those, don't come expecting the joyously unhinged rock'n'roll spirit, as the Reality acknowledges: “It just slipped away on one morning and when they woke up they found it was gone. They still sang the songs and made merry, but deep down, they knew something was wrong”.

Smart, referential, conceptual rock. With footnotes.

.

You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here