Box Car Racer is the only studio album by American rock band Box Car Racer. Produced by Jerry Finn, the album was released on May 21, 2002, through MCA Records. The band was a side-project of Blink-182 members Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker, with David Kennedy completing the band's studio lineup; a bassist and friend of Barker, Anthony Celestino, toured with the band throughout late 2002.
The record is primarily based on DeLonge's post-hardcore influences, such as Fugazi and Refused. The recording sessions were particularly difficult for him, as he had recently undergone back surgery. The record is a concept album detailing the end of the world, and features dark, moody tracks mulling over confusion. Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus—the only member of that band not involved in the project—felt betrayed over his lack of inclusion, which evolved into tensions between him and DeLonge, which contributed to the band's 2005 breakup. Despite this, Hoppus provided guest vocals on the album's twelfth track "Elevator".
Box Car Racer peaked at number twelve on the US Billboard 200 despite little promotion, and the two singles "I Feel So" and "There Is" charted on Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, with the former hitting the top 10. The album received positive reviews from music critics, who complimented the darker direction in comparison to DeLonge's previous work with Blink. The group toured the album in North America in late 2002 with the Used and H2O and subsequently dissolved in 2003.
Background
Box Car Racer was conceived by Blink-182 guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge and formed during a break from touring. The trio's European tour in the winter of 2001 was delayed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and rescheduled dates in early 2002 were also canceled due to DeLonge's back problems, the result of a herniated disc. He began taking painkillers and developed "neurosis-inducing side effects." DeLonge had felt "bummed out" and creatively stifled while recording the group's previous album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. On the ensuing tour, he and Blink drummer Travis Barker would jam "every day," and Barker introduced him to post-hardcore music. DeLonge had previously been derisive of any other styles of music, but soon embraced acts like Fugazi, Quicksand, Rocket from the Crypt, and Pitchfork. He began writing heavier-sounding guitar riffs; the first riff he created became part of the song "All Systems Go". Barker, in his 2015 memoir Can I Say, maintains that he asked DeLonge if they should use the riffs for a new Blink album. "I honestly thought that Tom had already had a conversation with [bassist Mark Hoppus] about this. They were so tight—inseparable—I couldn't imagine Mark didn't know," Barker writes.
For DeLonge, he had developed an "itch to do something where he didn't feel locked in to what Blink was." According to DeLonge, Box Car Racer was not "meant to be a real band," but rather "something to do in some spare time that was really only expected to be on the low list of the totem pole of priorities in my life, and just to have an experimental creative outlet." The project was at first solely acoustic guitar-based; he considered it in its earliest stages to be a "Violent Femmes-esque acoustic record". The unnamed project went through other names, such as The Kill, and the album was initially titled Et tu, Brute?. He eventually settled on the name Box Car Racer, which was actually the name of a band Barker was in just after high school that DeLonge liked. He began writing songs about the end of the world, and connected it thematically with the biblical Book of Revelation and World War II. When reading about the war, DeLonge was "freaked out" to learn that Fat Man, the atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, was dropped from the B-29 bomber Bockscar (commonly misspelled Boxcar).
Recording and production
Box Car Racer was recorded over six weeks beginning in December 2001, primarily at Signature Sound in San Diego, California. Sessions commenced quickly, with producer Jerry Finn having sent one whole load of equipment to Signature ahead of his arrival. Barker and DeLonge worked out "80 percent" of the completed album in Barker's warehouse in Corona, California, two weeks prior to recording. When the musicians entered the studio, little was changed aside from certain lyrics, according to assistant engineer Sam Boukas. Barker completed his drum tracks in one day at two recording facilities in Los Angeles prior to the Signature sessions. DeLonge invited musician David Kennedy, whom he had met in the San Diego music circuit some years prior, to perform lead guitar parts on the album. Roger Joseph Manning Jr. plays keyboards on the record.