“Recorded in the couple’s 1990s Oakland basement between stays in Berlin, tour dates in London, and dreamy sojourns up the rugged Mendocino coastline.”
Take a trip back to turn-of-the-millennium electronic-tinged indie pop rock with Evolver, an album by Lunchbox originally released in 2002 by Magic Marker Records and now newly remastered and reissued by Oakland-based Slumberland Records.
Lunchbox is a duo (Tim Brown and Donna McKean) who collaborate with a handful of other musicians to concoct a healthy serving of catchy indie pop and stay-at-home sound experimentations. For example: On “Particle/Wave,” a simplistic alt rock romp gets crushed through fuzzed out guitar and drums before disintegrating into an entrancing lo-fi tape loop. Then comes the straight-ahead uptempo jangle joy of “Letter from Overend,” followed by “Tone Poem,” which assembles a Beach Boys-like melange of muffled voices, dream train drones, and hypnotic drum breaks. For the collectors: The vinyl version of Slumberland’s reissue includes a bonus fourth side of “beats, loops, interludes and puzzling aural ephemera.”
In addition to repackaging indie classics, Slumberland has been steadily releasing some of the Bay’s best new indie music. Here were some of our favorites in 2024:
- Pop and Circumstance by Lunchbox
- Knife is But a Dream by Tony Jay
- The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel by Chime School
