U+N & Pie Shop present…

Strange Ranger

Little Lungs

& Leisure Sport

For Strange Ranger, indie rock isn’t just a genre; it’s an actual lifestyle, the prism through which every aspect of adulthood can be projected and understood. The 2016 album Rot Forever, by an earlier incarnation of the band, started its 72 minutes of Up Records fanfic with the line “She played rock guitar” and peaked with “Won’t you come see Pile with me?” Going by the name Sioux Falls at the time, core members Isaac Eiger and Fred Nixon were kids in Bozeman, Montana, who were prone to let one or two ideas stretch out for six minutes because that’s what their heroes Built to Spill and Modest Mouse would do. They moved to Portland for the followup, Daymoon, and it felt like a higher education, going deeper into the Pac NW canon and local scene politics (key song: “House Show”). They’re now in Philadelphia, and Remembering the Rockets is everything one might expect from an ambitious, reverent band moving to the epicenter of American indie rock: It’s sharper and more purposeful, forged by the pressure of real expectations. The best album of their deep and underappreciated catalog, it also imagines a life after indie rock.

Strange Ranger songs still emulate Buzz Bin bands of yore, though Remembering the Rockets tends to aim higher than the band used to, evoking the headliners of Lollapaloozas past rather than indie rock’s ragtag insurgents. More provocatively, the album often makes the case that both camps were playing the same game: Opener “Leona” sees no reason “Pictures of You,” “Semi Charmed Life,” and “Carry the Zero” couldn’t have coexisted on a Winamp playlist to commemorate a new crush or a fresh heartbreak. The most effortlessly anthemic Strange Ranger song to date, “Leona” volleys two chords and two states of being, giddy anticipation and paralyzing doubt. The lyrics are littered with the potentialities that get people up in the morning—the arrival of Friday night, a ticket for a trip abroad, a new love that leaves room for nothing else—yet Eiger sighs, “Not to say these things fix everything,” as though still distrustful of the idea that things could ever be this good forever. It ends with a symphonic burst of gratuitously overdubbed infinity guitars, a vision of endless uplift that’s at stark odds with the next song, “Sunday,” where Eiger is jobless, aimless, and washing the dishes just for a sense of purpose. “What if I just went away?/I’m alone in the world,” he sighs.