Car Seat Headrest announce “rock opera” new album ‘The Scholars’ with spiritual single ‘Gethsemane’

nme.com:

Car Seat Headrest have announced a new “rock opera” album called ‘The Scholars’. Check out the lead single ‘Gethsemane’ below.Set for release on May 2 via Matador, it is the first new studio album from the American rock band in five years, following on from 2020’s ‘Making A Door Less Open’.According to the band, the LP marks a new spiritual era for the members, and the music is set at the fictional college campus Parnassus University.

Here, the tracks follow the students and staff “whose travails illuminate a loose narrative of life, death, and rebirth”.The record has today (March 5) been previewed by the lead single ‘Gethsemane’ – an 11-minute, multi-part epic that captures the motif at the heart of the record.Describing the character piece that accompanies the song, the band said: “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.”Check it out below.According to a new description, the album was also inspired by the members’ experience during the COVID pandemic, when they were forced to scrap their plans as a band and were left facing health struggles.“It felt like a very technically challenging set because we had spent so many years doing this loud, fast, dirty rock music,” said drummer Andrew Katz, recalling their last LP. “And now.