On the evening of Friday, February 16, 2018, I spent the rest of my day laughing to a new album on Bandcamp called 1 Trait High, by a group called 1 Trait Danger (or stylized with variations as 1TraitDanger). This time, Andrew is the mastermind, with Will, Seth, and Ethan as his supporting cast. And god, is it good shit. At least an 8.6 on the Pitchfork “Fantasty” scale.

The cover of 1TraitDanger’s “1 Trait High.” Art by Remy Boydell (slimgiltsoul)

The album is a self-referential, meta-modern, comedic, electronic/rock odyssey that ties together Andrew’s funny videos on Instagram and Twitter, Will’s songwriting, their relationships as members of a touring band, and their rising star as a critically lauded indie rock group who won over the likes of Pitchfork from the very start — but it’s precisely the cultural hegemony of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and related music media that 1 Trait Danger is critiquing. It’s funny as fuck, and it shows that not only can the dudes of Car Seat Headrest create great music and enhance Will’s songwriting vision, Andrew can also guide the group’s truly epic trolling and the development of creative venues beyond their “serious” indie project — and even beyond music and social media.

1 Trait High is a journey that features, among other things, jocks being bullied by nerdy hackers, partying “in the back of my dad’s SUV,” alien boys, Obama, Jimmy Fallon, being beaten up by Norm MacDonald, physical altercations with your friend’s dad, and this year’s Mathlete tournament — it’s basically Andrew’s social media presence in the form of a 10-song album. But what makes it really special is how it hits on multiple levels beyond the funny vignettes and tripped-out club beats; how this group is the only band that gets the prestigious “Best New Music” from Pitchfork the same day as releasing a track, the album kickoff “Interlude 1,” where their drummer is yelling from the point of view as his “Pitchfork News” persona Tim Schenectady about bedroom rap sensation 1 Trait Danger, who has somehow hacked into Pitchfork’s command center:

“How did these guys get on the playlist? What the hell is going on? This is not part of the set list…what the fuck? This was supposed to be WHITNEY, Mike! This was supposed to be Vampire Weekend! This was supposed to be Perfume Genius — the good shit! Somebody get Mike in here right now!…We’ve been fucking hacked again! This is going to RUIN Pitchfork! This is going to ruin ME!”

1 Trait has hacked in and starts to rock out, but is interrupted by his mom (Andrew) yelling down the stairs. “Get upstairs and help your father — there’s mustard…everywhere.”

As Andrew explained on The Indieheads Podcast the day of the release, “Tim Schenectady is a reporter for ‘Pitchfork News’ that doesn’t know how to read…[he] was created as a way to talk shit about journalism as a whole, and especially music journalism. He is the embodiment of what music journalism has become.” He says that the 1 Trait Danger project is 99% work from being on the road, and lists comedy music like Tenacious D and “Weird Al” Yankovic as inspirations.

Andrew and the band have also since launched DirtPlug TV, home of Tim Schenectady (unclear if DirtPlug TV is Tim’s new launch after leaving “Pitchfork News” or if he still belongs to both), and a full-on parody of music media websites — on which he expanded his Instagram interview with Mr. Will Toledo to include an alternate text version, and also reviewed 1 Trait High, panning and raving about it as “sublime but also dreadful.” (EDITOR’S NOTE, 6/28/18: I later discovered that this was a rip on the fact a writer going by the name of “Matt the Raven” for Under the Radar magazine panned Twin Fantasy itself with the same phrase in a review.)

1 Trait High shows that the Car Seat Headrest crew, while making “serious” music that is putting them on the fast track to becoming indie royalty, do anything but take themselves too seriously. The album’s second track, “Saturday’s For The Boys (Saturday is for The Boys)” reads to me as the outright Car Seat Headrest parody track, with a long parenthetical title, morose lyrics about loneliness and “all the kids at school told me that I’m gay today,” turning into a complex mashup of synthesizers and guitar solos, and culminating in a singalong chorus. (The album cover of a personified dog is also a direct callback to the dog-related cover and themes of Twin Fantasy.) Nobody hacks Car Seat Headrest (or Will Toledo) better than 1 Trait Danger (or Andrew Katz) — but more on this later.

Then there’s a hacker bully named Cossett who bullies 1 Trait into giving him all his Bitcoins (“that’s all my Bitcoin for lunch, man!”) and runs him over in his pickup truck, while also haranguing him about his apparent jock tendencies. “I bet you deadlift 200 pounds and you’re really healthy, you fuckin’ nerd. When was the last time you coded in Python, you jock bitch?” And my favorite song on the album might be the demented teen party anthem “DROVE MY CAR,” where we find out that 1 Trait is in fact “the coolest kid in your middle school, G” because “I’m in seventh grade, and I’m 15, and fuck you” — starting a party in the back of his dad’s Cadillac SUV, complete with an array of drugs and electronic dance music.

Andrew is a talented electronic musician beyond killing it on the drums for Car Seat, which is certainly half the battle for making a comedic album that doesn’t suck musically. And this album lives at the intersection of just about every subculture of teens and beyond — hackers, jocks, musicians, partiers, nerds. Is it the perfect album??? Possibly. At any rate, it’s probably making Andrew reach God status with the teen boy demographic. (Although I’m a 30-year-old woman, so the weird appeal of this album is definitely broad.)

The track “Unique” tackles the issue of originality in music — “you are not unique, everything you’ve done has been done and will be done again,” which obviously calls to mind the legal issues Will has run into as a remixer and sampler of music (The Cars fiasco with Teens of Denial), with the somewhat profound conclusion that “being unique is not as fun as you’d think.” It functions as a meta-commentary on the fact that Will is one of the foremost remixers and samplers of music, including his own, throughout his career thus far. This shit is seriously deep.

The album reads to me as what happens when a group of multi-talented music dudes smoke weed, play video games, and dick around in the off-hours on tour, and have to find creative ways to make each other laugh and keep their energy up as they tour across the globe — and in this realm Andrew is in charge. Whether fleshing out songs that originated in his or Will’s Instagram videos that only superfans will recognize, or earning confusion and disdain from the non-comedic music media when they dropped “Stoney Bologne” last summer and billed it as a “diss track” (and was subsequently covered by the aforementioned Pitchfork as a serious response to some music troll, on top of making Stereogum’s 40 Worst Songs of 2017 list), Andrew, Will, and the crew can balance being indie darlings without feeling any restraint on their comedic (and still creative) outlets.

But I also finally understood something else as a Car Seat Headrest superfan:

Will Toledo x Andrew Katz: A Powerful Creative Bromance (A Word That Sucks But Somehow Keeps Being Relevant)

As I simultaneously absorbed 1 Trait High and deep-dove into Twin Fantasy, I realized that I was understanding more of the jokes, a fact that my True Car Seat Headrest Fan Club co-founder was somewhat incredulous about, as she had properly absorbed the original 2011 Twin Fantasy while I fell in love with Teens of Denial and How To Leave Town back when we were descending into our fandom and starting our Facebook page about the band in the summer of 2016.

But each album basically serves as Easter eggs for the other — the seriousness and literary-influenced brilliance of Will’s songwriting and way of setting up his songs on the vinyl insert (such as “Bodys” which features the parenthetical “(on a need-to-know basis)”) are cleverly mirrored in the 1 Trait song “Oh Actually,” on which Will makes a vocal appearance during one of their comedy vignettes about a Mathlete tournament, and Andrew riffs on “need-to-know basis” until it becomes “do you know my bassist?” (You can hear a slightly different version of Andrew and Will doing this at the end of the actual Car Seat Headrest song.) And Will says, “you better not be working on that fucking ‘Need-to-Know Basis’ song.”

Andrew is credited as “1traitdanger” on my shiny Twin Fantasy gatefold vinyl, next to Will as “the nonbeliever.” 1 Trait has hacked Car Seat Headrest — Pitchfork’s “the good shit” from “Interlude 1,” as it were.

These two albums act as a strangely perfect companion pair, even though superficially they are nothing alike (apart from being made by the same group of people). Perhaps like Will and Andrew in real life. Maybe there is no Will without Andrew, and no Andrew without Will. If Will is known as the enigmatic intellectual boy-genius, Andrew’s persona is pure clever, impulsive energy. And together, their projects hit all the right notes (lol). Not to get too serious about an album like 1 Trait High, but it’s made me realize the Will-Andrew dynamic is really what powers their creative life together in both of these projects. #breakthrough