Strange Ranger Break Routine

For years, Strange Ranger—Isaac Eiger, Fiona Woodman, Nathan Tucker and Fred Nixon—have been shapeshifting through different looks and sounds, all while making some of the most fascinating and compelling tunes. Their latest album, Pure Music, is a bright, ambitious detour from the emo-inspired indie rock they’d been recording and performing for the last seven years. From their debut album Rot Forever—which they made under the name Sioux Falls—to now, the band has transported across various cities in the country and pulled different influences from each location into their work.

Pure Music is experimental pop glazed with shoegaze overtones All at once, it’s gigantic and familiar, embossed with clips of YouTube videos dispersed throughout to give the record a rewarding, digital connective tissue. The tether that runs throughout the record is the unbreakable bond between the four musicians, which was tested when Eiger and Woodman ended their longterm romantic partnership. The two vocalists remained band members and, alongside Tucker and Nixon, decamped to a cabin in the Catskills area of Upstate New York to build the framework of their 2021 mixtape No Light in Heaven and Pure Music. The quartet emerged from their structure with songs like “Rain So Hard,” “She’s On Fire” and “Blue Shade”—some of the most-compelling electronic compositions this year. And the standout centerpiece, “Wide Awake,” showcases Woodman’s angelic, euphoric vocalizations.

With Pure Music out this Friday via Fire Talk, I sat down with Strange Ranger to talk about the album, separating rock and dance records, enduring through heartbreak as a band and translating the indescribable into cinematic, boundary-pushing synth-pop.

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Paste Magazine: The band moved to Portland for Daymoon and then Philadelphia for Remembering the Rockets. And Pure Music was made during the same sessions as No Light in Heaven in Upstate New York. How has the migratory backstory of Strange Ranger helped crystallize the band’s musical approach? Have you all found that different places spur different techniques or interests, or has it been more circumstantial than that, as if moving from place to place was essential for the band but not necessarily the making of the music?

Isaac Eiger: I’m sure that where we’re living is influencing the music in some way. The environment in which you make something definitely is going to influence what you’re making. But I think, as far as things sounding differently than they did before, I think that’s just natural. You listen to different stuff as you move through your life. Certainly, our first record felt very influenced by growing up in Montana. I don’t really think of [Pure Music] as an East Coast record, but I’m sure it is in some ways that I don’t understand.

Nathan Tucker: The one thing I would say—and Isaac, feel free to disagree—to me, it feels more like a city thing than some of the stuff we’ve done.

Eiger: Yeah, I think it’s definitely a “riding the train” record, if anything. I think riding the train in New York or Philly feels different than riding a bus in Portland or riding your bike in Montana. I do think, if you’re gonna point to anything about the environment influencing the music, I think a lot about this stuff in transit. I think that’s a good way to think about it, riding your bike in Montana, riding the bus in Portland, riding the train in New York.

Fred Nixon: Yeah, Rot Forever is like a “driving on the highway out West” album and Pure Music is a “riding the train at night in the city” album.

PM: Loveless was a big inspiration for Pure Music, but I do think it more greatly conjures the work of Talk Talk, especially Spirit of Eden. The music of Strange Ranger has often woven tapestries of emo, indie rock, electronica and, even, dream pop, at times. What do you think was the guiding force that put you into such an intimate place with shoegaze and post-punk this time around?

Eiger: We were just listening to Loveless and Talk Talk, as opposed to Modest Mouse. [Laughs]

Tucker: It’s hard to tell, because you never make the thing you set out to make, you know? It’s hard to point to exactly what is the result of your motivations. But, when I think of Loveless and Talk Talk—certainly Spirit of Eden or their later records—it’s stuff they just really spent a long ass time making. And we spent a really long time making this record. Just that sense of, like, “Oh, we’re going to take this whole thing apart and put it back together very slowly and annoyingly. Recently I read an interview with [Kevin Shields], and he was saying they would just spend a day getting guitar sounds for one verse and, six hours in, be like, “All right, time to record.”

Eiger: I do feel like I went totally crazy making this one. I can’t speak for you guys, but I feel like I went pretty psycho making this one—the other ones were more of “get in, get out,” this totally insane, psychic gauntlet. Everything was a lot more specific.

Nixon: I feel like some of my favorite moments on [Pure Music] are—and, again, it’s not necessarily things that we set out to do—a product of having a lot of time to work on things. I like things by Talk Talk where you’re listening to a record and you’re not always sure when one song ends and the next one begins. I think there are moments like that [on Pure Music] where some of the compositions go through those kinds of transformations or movements in ways that are different from the last couple of records—where everything was more concise, just song, song, song.

PM: Pure Music is relatively untethered from any of the records you’ve put out prior, but that has really been the story of everything since Remembering the Rockets. I’d love to hear about your relationship to exploration. Is there a motivation to continue building on what you’ve been doing, or do you often lean towards testing out new methods and textures?

Eiger: I get really obsessed with something and then I want to make this thing. And then we make it and I decide it was really embarrassing, or something. And then I want to do something that is the opposite of that. That just goes forever. You get so into something and then, once you do it, you’re made aware of all of your own limitations. And then the thing that you were doing feels totally unexciting—because you just did it.

Tucker: And especially if you got good at doing it, then it’s like, “Well, whatever.” It becomes way less fun trying to make something if you’re able to quickly get it most of the way there.

Eiger: It’s so boring to just do the same thing again. I feel like you make music because you feel compelled to and why would you be compelled to do the same thing twice? You don’t read the same book over and over again—well, some people do. I guess some people do. I hate routine and I hate repetition. Even on a daily level, the things that make me extremely miserable are just when you have to do the same thing again, like going to work. I’ll associate the way something smells. When I was working in restaurants, the way the walk would smell would make me so fucking miserable. I think that, just for whatever reason, the feeling of doing something again and again makes me feel really close to death. So I think, in a larger way, that’s what art feels like. If you’re just doing the same thing again, even if it’s totally benign, it starts to feel like a prison. And I just feel desperate to escape from it. I feel like a rat, or something. [Laughs]

Tucker: For the record, I think it’s fine when bands are slowly chipping away at and refining [their sound]. I think that’s really cool. It’s just not what we [do].

Eiger: Yeah, I think I have some pathology or something that prevents me from being content with whatever I’m doing. And then I just feel like I need to do something else all the time. I don’t think it’s good.

PM: It keeps things interesting, keeps things fresh and new. Maybe, personally, it’s a frustrating trait to have to work through. But I think, musically, it’s really rewarding.

Eiger: It has all kinds of other horrible effects on my life, but this is one of them.

PM: No Light in Heaven was categorized as a mixtape, and some outlets even considered it to be a one-off detour from your previous work. But there are so many places where that record really did signify what we’ve come to be ensconced in on Pure Music. Songs like “Pass Me By” and “Cheap Returns/Back My Home” immediately come to mind for me in that regard. How did that record serve as a building block for what became Pure Music?

Nixon: It’s funny, the mixtape is like the B-side record from [Pure Music]. We just did it in reverse order. I think we went in with all of those songs at the same time and, at some point, we had to make the decision about what fit and what was going to be [Pure Music]—and then the mixtape was the odds and ends.

Tucker: Yeah, I think that’s a fair characterization of it.

Eiger: We made Pure Music after [No Light in Heaven]. We weren’t sitting on that for forever, but the germs of the ideas were all collected at the same time.

Tucker: We were definitely figuring out how to do stuff, when we were finishing up the mixtape, that helped us work on Pure Music in a way that made the ideas more translatable.

Eiger: Yeah I think, if you can listen to both things back-to-back, you can tell that one is more well-conceived and exectured that the other one.

PM: It almost feels like you were trying to take those rock ’n’ roll inclinations of five years ago. It feels like those textures and themes were getting thinned out without losing that grit, whereas, on Pure Music, it becomes an attitude and not a heavily presented sonic. A song like “Blush” really gnaws at that, with the horn sensibilities you might catch on a Springsteen track cracking open a coda of digital sampling. How has your relationship with rock music changed, because you’ve always been plugging those themes into your records?

Eiger: It’s something that you get closer to and more distant from. It just waxes and wanes. I think, when we wre making this stuff, we weren’t that interested in rock music. But, I mean, it’s not a rocker but there’s still guitars. I think we just weren’t thinking about song structure in the way that you would if you were just making rock music. After we made [Pure Music], I got obsessed with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Rolling Stones and wrote a bunch of stuff that sounds like that—so who knows? It’s like any other kind of influence. You feel close to it and then you feel totally alienated by it and it just yo-yos your whole life.

PM: A song like “Blue Shade” has a breakdown that reminds me of a techno rave. And then, there are many other instances of dance-pop vignettes sprinkled across the record. I wouldn’t call Pure Music a straight-forward club record, but it very much conjures a similar energy. From your own perspectives, what does the idea of a “club record” mean to y’all, and how does that idea intersect with the motivations behind Pure Music?

Eiger: I don’t think [Pure Music] is a club record; I feel like it’s just all the music we like and all the music we want to make. Instead of sampling pieces of music, it’s like sampling ideas. That sounds really pretentious, but sampling genres and musical ideas. Usually, dance tracks are, like, 10 minutes long and you’re bringing different drums in and out the whole time. But, instead, we’ll do it for 20 seconds. All of these different aesthetic references create a feeling, like when you hear a four-on-the-floor kick and a certain kind of synth pad—it feels like something to you in a historical way, it feels like something to you in an emotional way.

I feel like what we were doing was using these big shoegaze guitars and a tremolo that conjures associations in your brain in the same way that the color of dress somebody’s wearing in a movie does. All of those decisions you’re making are curational and have these associations that hit these parts of your brain that you don’t even know are hidden. I feel like a lot of [Pure Music] was using tropes of dance music and just messing with them in a playful way, trying to create these different associations that we were hoping are kind of novel, or something—maybe you haven’t heard this particular mash of things before.

Tucker: I think, for me, there is some value to a rock record versus electronic music—or computer music, however you want to categorize it—in the sense that, I think there’s a real difference in how you’re metabolizing your influences and the stuff that excites you and then presenting it in a way that feels novel to you and that you hope feels novel and interesting to other people. But, I think there’s a difference in the way that happens. I’m not sure if I can really describe, in words, what that difference is or how that functions differently, but there’s things that you’re talking about, Isaac, that are metabolized differently.

Eiger: The computer allows you to make really extreme decisions, right? In a rock band context, you’re, ultimately, hostage to your own limitations in a very real way. If this is how you play guitar, that’s how you play guitar. You can practice and try to play guitar differently, but you’ve kind of got what you got. This is what the drummer sounds like, what the bass player sounds like. Everybody has range but, ultimately, you are the musician you are—and the computer allows you to just totally explode that. And there are all of these limitations there, too, that are hidden. It’s a new set of limitations. But it allows you to contort things. I sound totally utopian right now about computers—which is not at all how I feel—but it does allow you to be more extreme in what you’re doing. Because your own human body is no longer controlling what you’re able to do.

Tucker: It’s a pretty rare rock band that is making decisions that are really avant-garde. Not that we’re on the cutting edge of the avant-garde, but it’s harder in that setting. When I think of a rock record, you don’t need a computer to make. Most people do use computers, but you don’t really need one.

Eiger: I think there is still tremendous, huge potential [for computers] in rock music. We just aren’t doing that yet, which is fine.

PM: Fiona, your singing really shines on this LP. When it comes to experimenting with harmonies with Isaac in the studio, what does that space look like? How do your voices play off of one another?

Fiona Woodman: Vocals are my favorite instrument, hands down. It’s always the first thing I notice in other people’s music, and the act of singing is the closest I can get to pure euphoria. There were a couple tracks on [Pure Music] where we really sat down and composed harmonies, but usually we’d just hit record and I’d riff. Isaac and I have basically the same taste, so I feel like we often hear the same thing in our heads and it flows naturally.

Eiger: She just has really good ideas. Nathan’s also really helpful with harmony stuff. Fiona and I have sung together for a few years now, and I like how it fits together. I also like writing knowing that she’ll be singing it. I feel like I make different decisions knowing that she’ll be singing something. It’s interesting and gets you out of your perspective, in a way. It can feel really myopic, just writing things that you’re gonna sing. When you’re imagining another person doing it, it opens you up a little bit. I think there’s a lot of more fluidity with vocal parts on this record, like counter-melody and call-and-response stuff that we hadn’t really done before.

PM: The songwriting portion of Pure Music was inspired by Burial’s quote about being able to feel the energy of a club within your heart while alone. Obviously this album was made during a blizzard in the Catskills in New York, but do you think that you would have opted to explore the boundaries of isolation even if you hadn’t been shut in from the cold, trapped in a cabin and working non-stop?

Eiger: I think making it in this cloistered environment with crazy shit happening outside created this real focus in us. We were just working really hard for long periods of time on these small details. [The blizzard] allowed us to do that, but I don’t think the emotional quality of the album came from being isolated. I didn’t feel more isolated [in the cabin] than I do just throughout my life, being in the world.

PM: Fiona and Isaac, you were in the process of breaking up when this album was getting made. I think everyone expects a story like that to transform into some Rumours-esque anecdote of, like, “Oh, we only spoke to each other when we were recording the music.” But it’s just never as cinematic or mythical as that. When you were going through something as shaking and emotional as a breakup, how did the music become grounded for the two of you—or, even did it become more difficult to be in a room together and perform a song like “Rain So Hard,” where you both harmonize about hopelessness?

Eiger: I do have moments where it really hits, the context of everything. And that is sort of wild. But I think that playing music together has been really necessary. And it’s allowed us to remain close in a way that I think, had we broken up and not played music before, I don’t think it would have been as easy to be in each other’s lives in the same way that we are now. And I’m really grateful for that, because we really care about one another. I feel a lot of gratitude to the fact that we play music together, because I think that I might have been too stupid or immature with us breaking up in the way that I think we have dealt with it. I feel good about how we’ve handled it.

Woodman: Obviously that whole process was incredibly painful. Sometimes, it felt totally normal and chill, and other times grief would hit like a pile of bricks. We were together for so long and our lives were so extremely entwined, but [Pure Music] gave us a way to maintain closeness through that unraveling—and I’m grateful for that. It probably would have been so much less painful and maddening if we decided to just drop it all and drop out of each other’s lives, but I’m so glad we didn’t. He’s one of my closest friends and I’m really proud of what we’ve made.

PM: Nathan, you had mentioned that you were, at first, worried about what Isaac and Fiona breaking up would mean for the future of the band. Once it became clear that the band was going to stick together and you were going to finish Pure Music, how did that change or solidify the bond that you all have together as a group?

Tucker: What’s funny is, I think we already had, in some respects, gotten a lot better at just being honest with one another and being kind to one another—even in moments where we, maybe, don’t have the energy for kindness. Before COVID, we had just toured a ton and you have to develop that kind of understanding with each other, as a group, in order to make that work. I was worried at first, but I was pretty confident that if anyone could pull it off, it would be Isaac and Fiona. It’s helped us continue to keep each other honest, because being in a band is—mostly—really annoying and stupid, except for moments where it’s the best thing ever. I think it takes a lot of work to not be at each other’s throats.

PM: I hate throwing this word around, because it gets thrown around too much I think. But, Pure Music is truly cinematic. There’s even that line in “Rain So Hard,” the one that goes: “How do I get out of this movie now?” And with the interpolation of YouTube samples across the record, everything feels digital and viral like an anthemic blockbuster. But, sometimes, there are these experimental, meticulous moments that are non-linear like an arthouse film. Was there a moment for you all during the process of making this album where the songs themselves began to transcend the margins of music and take on a new, indescribable life?

Eiger: I definitely think it was less about “This is the chords and melody of the verse, this is the chords and melody of the chorus” and it was more about the songs having these feelings that you couldn’t articulate. I couldn’t tell you right now what they are, but, maybe, if we do it the right way, it will hit you in the way that a memory does—where there’s all this emotion baked into the song and it’s been communicated in a way that isn’t just about harmony and melody. It’s clips pulled from weird sources and textures and little oddities here and there that feel just like walking around with other people does. Something where there’s all this shit happening all the time and you just don’t really know how to make sense of it all, it all feels overwhelming—in a sensory way. [I was] trying to think about it as one big piece of music and sound, rather than a bunch of songs.

Watch Strange Ranger’s 2019 Paste studio session here.

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Matt Mitchell is Paste‘s assistant music editor. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, but you can find him online @yogurttowne.