Strange Ranger will drop their new album Remembering The Rockets on July 26, via Tiny Engines. The Philadelphia-via-Portland-via-Montana group, is comprised of Isaac Eiger (guitars, vocals), Fred Nixon (bass, piano, vocals), Nathan Tucker (drums), and Fiona Woodman (vocals), have traversed genres, moods, and textures while maintaining one important throughline: an exploration of closeness.

“Trying to close the distance between yourself and another person and wondering how much can really be done about that gap,” Eiger says. “​Sometimes you don’t want to be close with others but you feel guilty, and sometimes you do but you can’t. ​So much suffering and horror is coming if we don’t seriously restructure our entire society, and I just really hope we get it together. I want to be a dad more than basically anything, and it’s unclear if that’d be an OK decision to make,” he says.

“​After making ​Daymoon,​ I think Isaac and myself were both feeling pretty creatively exhausted with the rock band format,” Nixon says. “We wanted the feel of the next record to put you in a trance.”

“It was definitely a learning curve figuring out how to do some of the weirder stuff,” Eiger says. “We’ve been using keyboards for a while now, but before we made this record we got this old Japanese synthesizer [Korg M1] which has like a trillion sounds. So that was a totally different experience.”

“We really didn’t know what we were doing and probably stumbled our way into a bunch of sounds we wouldn’t be able to recreate if we tried,” Nixon adds.

Portland, OR producer Dylan M. Howe was an essential contributor in this regard. Most of the samples and electronic beats were designed with Howe’s assistance, and he helped the band navigate the archaic software of the Korg M1—which was used for nearly every synth sound on the album.

“​The image of a rocket in the sky just feels very beautiful to me and full of possibility,” Eiger says. “If you’re someone who wants to have kids and you decide not to, that kinda feels like folding and just saying, “yeah everything is fucked, there is no future.” And why even live at that point? It sucks that ‘hope’ has—for good reason—become this cheesy, lame idea. But if you’ve got no hope, you’re completely fucked in a situation like this one.”

Bio by Eli Enis

Strange Ranger
Tour Dates

Sept 05 – Richmond, VA – Gallery 5
Sept 06 – Raleigh, NC – Hopscotch
Sept 08 – Gainesville, FL – The Atlantic Split
Sept 09 – Tampa, FL – The Hub

Supporting Joyce Manor

Oct 03 – Bloomington, IN – The Bishop
Oct 04 – Urbana, IL Canopy – Club
Oct 05 – Columbia, MO – Rose Music Hall
Oct 06 – Lawrence, KS – The Bottleneck
Oct 09 – Iowa City, IA – Gabes Oasis

Supporting Chastity Belt

Nov 06 – Madison, WI – University of Wisconsin
Nov 07 – Bloomington, IN – The Bishop
Nov 08 – Detroit, MI – Deluxx Fluxx
Nov09 – Toronto, ON – The Garrison
Nov 11 – Burlington, VT – ArtsRiot
Nov 12 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
Nov 13 – Brooklyn, NY – Elsewhere
Nov 14 – Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
Nov 15 – Washington, DC – U Street Music Hall
Nov 16 – Durham, NC – Motorco
Nov 17 – Asheville, NC – The Mothlight
Nov 19 – Atlanta, GA – 529
Nov 20 – Nashville, TN – High Watt
Nov 21 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
Nov 22 – Grinnell, IA – Grinnell College
Nov 23 – St. Paul, MN – Turf Club