Box Car Racer - Box Car Racer

Box Car Racer was supposed to be a side project. Instead it became the record that broke up blink-182 and quietly rewired an entire subgenre. Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker cut it in 2002 with guitarist David Kennedy while Mark Hoppus was left out of the loop, and the fallout took years to settle.

Musically it is where DeLonge's Fugazi and Refused obsessions finally got an outlet. Jerry Finn produced and Rich Costey mixed, giving the album a cavernous, echo drenched sound that had almost nothing to do with pop punk. "I Feel So" and "There Is" became the singles, all soaring delay and open space, while "Letters to God" and "Cat Like Thief" push into genuinely aggressive post-hardcore territory with Tim Armstrong and Mark Hoppus turning up as guests. "My First Punk Song" is the one moment of comic relief on an otherwise deadly serious record.

Every emo and post-hardcore band that got big in the mid 2000s owes something to this album, and DeLonge carried its sonic template directly into Angels & Airwaves. For a one off, it casts an unusually long shadow.

This 15th anniversary reissue puts all thirteen tracks on black vinyl, mastered at Record Technology Incorporated. A key document from a strange and productive year.