#20: pure music
When Strange Ranger first announced Pure Music earlier this year, I wasn’t very excited. Even though I had been following the band since their first full-length Rot Forever came out in 2016 (under the name Sioux Falls), impressed and thrilled by their restlessness, tracking their constant transformations on each release, I was starting to feel that I had lost their thread. While I liked their experimental, largely electronic 2021 mixtape No Light in Heaven, I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of the band leaving emo aesthetics behind entirely, and the teaser single “Rain So Hard” felt strange and distant to me, off putting when set against the blurry indie rock of Daymoon or the off-kilter pop of Remembering the Rockets. I waffled between a skepticism that they’d be able to pull off this complete leap into electronic art rock and a kind of blasé feeling that even if they could pull it off, it really wouldn’t seem like the same band anymore anyway. The prospect of losing them in this way, in nature if not in name, was particularly depressing to me.
On the morning that Pure Music came out, the day was bright and mild, and I had plans to try and sneak in a haircut before my shift at the museum. Looking at the cover of the record, a snapshot of a glowing cityscape against a black night, the mood seemed a little off. But I decided I couldn’t wait to see if I could find the band I loved in this new sound, so I clipped my speaker to my backpack and gave it a first spin on my bike ride to center city in the early morning.
Usually I’m a bit more particular about first listens. I like to be able to grasp as much of what’s going on as possible. Usually, this means I listen while I’m sitting at my desk or walking the dog. If it’s something really special I’ll make a night of it. The first time I listened to Illusory Walls, I waited until everyone was out of the house at night, put my big headphones on. The bike is usually reserved for higher energy bands, like the new Militarie Gun or Fiddlehead. It was, in theory, not so ideal to try and get into Pure Music with the wind blowing everywhere and potholes shaking me up and down as I rode downhill toward All About Hair.
But, oddly enough, it kind of worked. Something about the drama of “Rain So Hard” finally locked in as I whizzed by the firehouse down 28th street. The silvery intensity of “She’s on Fire” found a way into my stomach as I rode past the art museum, through the shortcut behind the Rodin. Something like a spoon against a metal countertop in my brain rang off as “Dream” entered its extended impressionistic segment, building a beat toward a vibrant conclusion. I slowed down to listen to a couple more before I got to my destination, parking my bike to the thick noir of “Blue Shade.”
The streets were pretty empty after I left All About Hair, so I let the album keep playing as I walked my bike down to Rittenhouse. This felt like a bit of a half listen, slightly drowned out by jackhammers and honking semi-trucks. But it felt more like I was wading in, like I was just getting my bearings. By the time I sat down in the park, still with a little time before my shift around the corner, I put my headphones on and only had one song left, the dazzling closer “Dazed in the Shallows.” Some things started to make sense. I started to feel moved, to feel the song a little bit in my body. It felt big, heavy, layers and layers of sound, a greater density than anything they had made before. I took a walk around the park and listened to the song again, drawn in by the sound of it but still feeling that this didn’t seem much like the band that wrote “New Hair” or “Leona” or “Most Perfect Gold of the Century,” shaggy and quirky songs built of smaller, more intimate things.
Busy over the next couple days, I spent a lot of time thinking about Pure Music. By the time I finally got to give it another listen, I was leaving a long, busy day at work. Feeling totally drained, I sat down on my bed and turned the record up loud on my speakers, gazed off into nothing while I let it play through. When it was over I put it on again. A few days later I ordered a record and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since.
Pure Music is overwhelming in some ways — every song on this record is incredibly rich, new layers of sound revealing themselves all the time. It is very different from what this band has done before, but as I sunk ever deeper, I started to see the throughlines pulling me back to their past work. The spidery little guitar line that steadies “She’s on Fire,” the ambivalent, bewildered imagery of “Blush” (“Dawn comes now in cemetery heat…Blue before the gray / Memorized your face”). I think about a song like “House Show,” which so vividly depicted a scene with just the smallest details (underneath the lowlights / in the freezing cold garage / I thought you talked to the reporter / she had a polka dot recorder”). I can hear those same instincts at play throughout Pure Music, descriptions of louder, darker rooms rendered through fragmented visuals and corners of conversations (“Do I dance uptight? / You dance just right / On and on in thе flashing lights”). The guitar maximalism of a record like Rot Forever is identifiable here in a new kind of largesse, towering upward in the songs rather than outward in the tracklisting.
And the progression here forms an ever-compelling narrative in terms of the world that Strange Ranger is working to depict over the course of their career. The rangy, hooky indie rock on Remembering the Rockets, the band’s last proper full length and one of the best indie rock records in recent memory, seemed to render everything in past tense, everything a remnant of a world dissolved, never to return. On Pure Music, everything is experience, up front, ongoing — the biggest moments are rendered in soundscapes rather than words, as if everything is too fresh to fully understand. It feels freer than Remembering the Rockets, in some ways, because it lets go of a notion that everything is set in stone.
I am still thinking about Pure Music — one of its many strengths is the way in which it gives you a lot on which to chew. When I saw Strange Ranger perform at Johnny Brenda’s this weekend, they played only songs from the new record and No Light in Heaven — it seems that the band is also still thinking about this immediacy, this affective quality, this emerging vibrancy. We danced against the balcony as we tried to ignore a loud continuous conversation to our left. Beneath us, others dance and glide instinctively under spinning red lights, as the city shone on against the dark outside the club.
So many great songs have come out in the last couple weeks. Here are a few of my favorites. Listen along on Spotify or Apple Music.
Speaking of worldbuilding, the novelistic universe of Empty Country continues to get even stranger and more fascinating at every turn. The band’s previous single “Pearl” is probably my favorite song of the year so far, and “Erlking” keeps up the momentum with a forceful, ripping track complete with supernatural demons and crushing political realities. Joseph D’Agostino (formerly of Cymbals Eat Guitars) is a visionary indie rock storyteller and “Erlking” is some of his most thrilling and beautiful work to date.
Ratboys has been playing head-to-head with Empty Country this year (“Pearl” and the last Ratboys single “The Window” came out around the same time, both of them knocked me out) — these are two records I’m probably most excited to hear. “Crossed That Line” is fuzzy and jittery rock, and it’s fun as hell.
A really gorgeous capital E-Emo song, twinkly and sentimental, sprawling and autumnal. I love the way this song feels a bit like a nesting doll of classic mathy emo, one distinct movement emerging from the last in a way that feels fresh.
Del Paxton — “Up With a Twist”
Thrilled beyond belief to have a new LP on the way from Del Paxton. The new track, “Up With a Twist,” is energetic and raw from the jump, knocking you off-balance before settling into a center that gazes toward a distant horizon. It does a lot in a short amount of time, a testament to the band’s tightly coiled style.
A buoyant and sparkling track from Karl Kuehn’s (Museum Mouth, Say Anything) Gay Meat project, which released a really sharp EP Bed of Every last year. A springy acoustic riff gives way to a driving hook in which Kuehn asks “did I ever show you pebble beach?” It perfectly encapsulates the warm excitement of meeting someone new and letting them into all of your personal lore, all of the places and things that made you who you are.
My friend Zac tipped me off on this band, which sounds like 1999, like The Get Up Kids or The Promise Ring with the more serious sentimentality of The Early November. Zac is always in the weeds, finding the best stuff at the ground floor in these circles — you should be following him if you have any investment in this scene.
Broken Record — “See it Through”
Similar vibe, but more Jimmy Eat World than Get Up Kids. This song feels like a hit — I can see hundreds of hands in the air, mouths open at that chorus. This is a band to watch.
It has been so cool to watch Oldsoul up the ante at every turn. The singles from their upcoming LP, Education on Earth, feel bigger and bolder than anything they’ve done before. This one has a nice little groove before bursting into a sweeping anthem.
Some exciting things coming in the IKAD world very soon. I’m very excited to share. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks.
My name is Jordy Walsh, and I’m a writer based in Philadelphia. I Keep a Diary is a newsletter about music, books, and writing. You can follow me on Twitter for more thoughts on all that stuff.