Stagnation, Hardships, and Growing Older

Photographs By Rick Perez

Reckless Magazine hung out backstage with the Indie Punk band Cardboard Boxer before a sold out show at the Concert Lounge in Riverside, California. Cardboard Boxer opens up about their latest album, “Current Youth”, and how it represents themes such as growing up, balancing work and music, and how the band has evolved as musicians and individuals.

Riverside, USA

The band caught up with Reckless last summer when you played at The Smell in Los Angeles, California. How have you been since then? Any exciting updates?

Since that Smell show we have grown a ton as musicians as well as people. We have put out a new album with Postmark Records called “Current Youth” and played a ton of amazing shows up and down the West Coast.

What is your album, "Current Youth", about? What story are you trying to tell?

“Current Youth” is all about the feeling of stagnation; The feeling of getting older and nothing changing. We dive into other aspects of growing up as well, such as saying goodbye to old friends and dealing with the struggles of balancing work and music.

How do you think your fans would relate to the themes in the album?

We feel like the themes on the album are pretty relatable and universal experiences most of us go through. Especially with the last few years of the pandemic, we’ve all had some sort of loss or hardship. We did our best to tie in all these feelings into our music.

How do you think "Current Youth" represents your growth as a band?

“Current Youth” is by far our most put together album. We spent the most time on songwriting, recording, and evolving the music than we ever had before. This album represents our growth not only as musicians but as people.

What were some highs and lows while making the album?

Thomas: Id say making the album was a overall good experience, it was really cool to see how quickly we were able to get these songs together, and working with new bassist Cameron Jackson brought a previously unrealized dimension to our sound. The low was definitely that we completed the writing for the album during Covid so it took a whole year before we were able to play it live and share the music with our fans, however I feel like it also forced us to put more effort into production than we ever have before and the album would not be the same without the low point.

From the songs off the album, what is each member's favorite song? Why?

Shea: My favorite song off the album is “Growing Older”. I go back and forth all the time on which song I like the most, but I feel like just have the strongest connection with that one.

Thomas: “Pseudo Confidence” has to be my favorite song on the album, we composed it to be a haunting representation of what wasting away and coming to terms with defeat feels like and I think it was able to capture that feeling exactly how we envisioned it.

You recently played some shows in Riverside and Santa Cruz, California. How were they?

Those shows were great! We had a blast playing with our buddies in Archer Oh and can't wait to get them down to San Diego to return the favor. Then up in Santa Cruz , we had a great time playing with our close friends in the band Backhand and their friends in Grad Night. Plus it was amazing to get to watch local legends in Too Bad Eugene kill it on stage.