• News

• All

Jul 17, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Kiernan Francis

New York City via Philadelphia quartet Strange Ranger are releasing a new album, Pure Music, this Friday via Fire Talk. Now the band have shared the album’s fourth single, “Wide Awake,” via a music video. Lola Dement Myers directed the video. Watch it below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

Strange Ranger is Isaac Eiger, Fiona Woodman, Nathan Tucker, and Fred Nixon.

“I was thinking about these flashes of memory that stick in your head forever,” Eiger says of “Wide Awake” in a press release. “Bursts of senses that return every now and again but don’t lead anywhere beyond themselves like a GIF in your brain. It’s weird to think about what stays with you and if that’s at all related to how important the thing in question was.”

Pure Music includes “Rain So Hard,” a new song the band shared in March. Then when the album was announced in May, the band shared its second single, “She’s on Fire,” via a music video. “She’s on Fire” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then the band shared the album’s third single, “Way Out.” “Way Out” was again one of our Songs of the Week.

Pure Music is the follow-up to 2019’s Remembering the Rockets album and 2021’s No Light in Heaven mixtape. The album was written while Eiger and Woodman were breaking up and was recorded in a cabin in Upstate New York during a blizzard.

“With a few exceptions, I can’t tell whose production ideas were whose, when I listen back to it,” said Nixon in a previous press release. “We were literally trapped in this cabin, manically working at all hours, and the energy was crazy, in a fun way.”

“Music makes us transcend the feeling of being alienated from or trapped by the world,” Woodman added. “I want the experience of listening to Pure Music to be euphoric.”

“She’s on Fire” has a bit of an ’80s vibe at the start before it embraces ’90s shoegaze (the previous press release cited My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless). The press release also mentioned disco, house, and experimental pop as reference points for Pure Music.

Strange Ranger Tour Dates:

Fri. Aug. 4 - New York, NY @ DROM ✧
Sat. Aug. 5 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s ♡
Thu. Aug. 31 - Richmond, VA @ The Camel
Fri. Sep. 1 - Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
Sat. Sep. 2 - Atlanta, GA @ 529
Sun. Sep. 3 - Pensacola, FL @ The Handlebar
Tue. Sep. 5 - Denton, TX @ Andy’s
Wed. Sep. 6 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk
Fri. Sep. 8 - Phoenix, AZ @ Linger Longer Lounge
Sun. Sep. 10 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Resident
Mon. Sep. 11 - San Francisco, CA @ Thee Parkside
Tue. Sep. 12 - Reno, NV @ The Holland Project
Thu. Sep. 14 - Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
Fri. Sep. 15 - Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
Sun. Sep. 17 - Missoula, MT @ The Showroom
Mon. Sep. 18 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
Tue. Sep. 19 - Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
Fri. Sep. 22 - Chicago, IL @ The Hideout
Sat. Sep. 23 - St. Louis, MO @ The Sinkhole
Mon. Sep. 25 - Indianapolis, IN @ Healer

✧ w/ Nourished By Time & special guests
♡ w/ Snoozer, Full Body 2

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.