Some records age quietly. Others settle into the kind of status you do not argue with. Time Spent Driving’s Just Enough Bright belongs in that second category.

Originally released in 2002, the indie emo staple returns April 10 in a newly remixed and remastered vinyl edition via Thirty Something Records. The reissue revisits a record that helped define a certain emotional lane in early 2000s independent music, restoring clarity to the original sessions without sanding down what made it resonate in the first place.

Tracks one through ten were originally recorded and produced by J. Robbins at Tiny Telephone Studios in San Francisco in January 2002. For this edition, Robbins returned to remix the album himself, offering a perspective shaped by time rather than revisionism. The record was then remastered by Dan Coutant at Sun Room Audio, bringing renewed depth and balance while keeping the original emotional weight intact.

The reissue also includes an eleventh track, “What It Should Be Like,” written during the original sessions but never fully completed. Recorded in 2024 at Compound Recording by Olav Tabatabai, the song closes a loop more than two decades in the making and offers a rare extension of the album’s original creative period rather than a modern add-on.

Formed in 1998, Time Spent Driving emerged from the San Francisco Bay Area punk and hardcore scene, but their sound leaned into something more reflective and melodic than many of their contemporaries. Over 150 shows across the U.S. and Europe during their initial run built a devoted following, and Just Enough Bright became a defining statement from that era. The record has endured because it feels lived-in, not manufactured.

In 2025, the band signed with Thirty Something Records to reissue much of their back catalog, with new music planned for 2026. This vinyl release feels less like nostalgia and more like restoration, a careful return to something that deserved a definitive edition all along.

You can stream the newly remastered “Angel and I” via No Echo ahead of the full April 10 release.

Pre-Order the Vinyl:
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U.S.
Digital

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