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While on their “The Scholars” tour, indie-rock darling Car Seat Headrest made a stop at Boston’s MGM Music Hall at Fenway on Sep. 27.
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Before the show, audience members crowded the barricades, hoping for a chance to get close to Car Seat Headrest, carrying signs, flags, and pushies of a character from the band’s 2016 album “Twin Fantasy (Mirror to Mirror).”
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After a short public service announcement, the band kicked off their set with “CCF (I'm Gonna Stay With You).”
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The band played with heavily saturated colors in their lighting — a choice that played well with the rock-opera narrative of their latest album, “The Scholars,” which accounted for most of the setlist.
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Aside from the band — leader Will Toledo, guitarist Ethan Ives, drummer Andrew Katz, bassist Seth Dalby, and Ben Roth on synth — only large draped screen cloths onto which characters from the band’s latest album were projected took up the stage.
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Throughout the performance, the crowd jumped along to the punchy guitar riffs, with some crowd-surfing to the front of the audience.
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Ives played with persistent intensity, moving freely around the stage as the music demanded.
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Toledo, who was diagnosed with histamine intolerance following a bout with Covid-19, sang through a mask. Yet at no point was his performance dampened, still expressing the raw emotion captured in the lyrics.
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Throughout the set, the band lit Toledo with a single spotlight from behind, as if he were an angelic figure amidst the darkness of the rest of the stage.
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Ives and Toledo traded verses throughout the night, playing their voices and their guitars off one another.
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At some moments in the set, the sonic intensity exploded — paired with performances and light design to match. It was a fitting performance for the band, packed with emotion, but with enough space to breathe and take it all in.
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