My Top 20 Strange Ranger Songs
The Artist Formerly Known as Sioux Falls
I’m not used to my favorite bands breaking up. I feel like it doesn’t happen that much these days, or maybe it’s about to start happening a lot more as I enter my 30s and so do the musicians who are staring down another decade of grinding it out on the road.
I was especially surprised when Strange Ranger announced they were calling it quits last October because I has just seen them play an amazing—if somewhat sparsely attended—concert just a month earlier. There was no writing on the wall from this blogger’s vantage point; it was a fun atmosphere that night.
The short synopsis of the band is that that they spent the 2010s exploring various modes of ‘90s-indebted indie rock while moving from Bozeman to Portland to Philly, before making a pivot to New York and electronic textures in the last few years. There was a name change from Sioux Falls to Strange Ranger in 2016. Isaac Eiger and Fred Nixon—high school friends in Montana—have been the constants throughout, and the group ended as a four-piece along with Fiona Woodman and Nathan Tucker.
The band never fully got a foothold in the indie rock critical consensus—a middling Pitchfork score for a 72-minute debut album followed quickly by a name change is a tough set of obstacles—but I know they had loyal fans. For me, Strange Ranger became one of those bands where if someone liked them, I felt a special connection and knew I could trust their taste. (Exhibit A of this phenomenon is of course my beloved Cymbals Eat Guitars/Empty Country.) It’s a low-key fandom that’s refreshing in age of everyone being so goddamn annoying about things they like. But do I wish the band made a lot more money and were rewarded for their talent? Yes!!
I had trouble finding a way into Rot Forever in 2016 (research for this piece fixed that) but I’ve been fully on board for the whole Strange Ranger era and have always been grateful when a new album came along. With the announcement of the end of the band, I wanted to take a survey of their whole career, to provide a resource into what might seem like a daunting and confusing discography.
20. “If You Let It” (2016, Rot Forever)
I basically like every song on Rot Forever, the only full-length—emphasis on “full”—release under the Sioux Falls name. It’s too massive and homogeneous to hold together as a perfect object, but I love the overall sound. Any individual track in isolation is a winner. “If You Let It” is the epic of this epic album, a slow build that turns up the bass and punches through with bursts of raw emotional screams. “I MISS MY DOGGGG, AND MY SISTER!”
19. “New Hair” (2018, How It All Went By)
A bit of a lo-fi grungy return to the 2016 Sioux Falls sound after the more precise slowcore of Daymoon. A no-frills rocker with a catchy chorus, fun drum fills, and some of that patented Strange Ranger “woo-ooh-ooh”-ing.
18. “Dinosaur Dying” (2016, Rot Forever)
I didn’t fully connect with Rot Forever in 2016, but this was the easiest sell with its soaring chorus—slightly strained vocals and all—and normal length. I love how loud the bass is mixed—it’s on equal ground with the guitar. And of course we have some “woo-ooh-ooh”s in the back half!
17. “San Francisco Earthquake” (2016, Rot Forever)
How to stand out on Rot Forever: incorporate some sick group vocals to scream the entire last verse, including the lines, “HALO 2 IN SEVENTH GRADE/WE WATCHED THEM HANG SADDAM HUSSEIN/ALL MY FRIENDS ARE GETTING OLD/SEATTLE LOST THE SUPERBOWL.”
16. “Living Free” (2019, Remembering the Rockets)
A big part of this exercise was just separating out the pop songs from the atmosphere songs. Every album in the Strange Ranger era is designed as a full package, with songs that exist to set the mood rather than be listened to on their own. There are instrumentals, there are experiments, there are unorthodox vocal choices. (Why is their top song on Spotify a one-minute Auto-Tuned interlude?) “Living Free” bridges the gap between these two categories more than any other song on this list with its swelling chords and big, spacey drums.
15. “House Show” (2017, Daymoon)
Daymoon officially ushered in a new sound along with the band’s new name, but even with the more subdued atmosphere, as soon as the noisy guitar breakdown hits you can tell it’s the same guys. Introspective music that still has a groove to it.
14. “Ranch Style Home” (2019, Remembering the Rockets)
Some of the more challenging vocals in the Strange Ranger oeuvre—which can definitely be a stumbling block with a lot of songs not represented on this list—but also some of the best songwriting. Delightfully loose.
13. “Empty Shows” (2014, Lights Off For Danger)
The opening verse sounds so much like LVL UP that it throws me off a bit, but what’s wrong with sounding like LVL UP? The male-female extended twin harmonies bring it home beautifully (along with the perfect “rock and roll!” background adlib). This is their campfire song.
12. “Miranda and Also Some Bad Dreams” (2014, Lights Off For Danger)
The most rewarding part of this list-making exercise was listening to Lights Off For Danger for the first time. As a non-streaming EP released under the band’s old moniker, I’m sure it’s flown under other people’s radars too, but it’s pound-for-pound the best Sioux Falls release and probably the ideal introduction for any indie rocker looking for an entry point into the discography. Here’s some snappy songwriting that’s just a blast. “You design software/I've got like 3 socks to wear.”
11. “Dom” (2016, Rot Forever)
Direct and urgent and angry. The bass kicks it off and does a lot of the heavy lifting here. The song rocks. I need to stop bringing up the “woo-ooh-ooh”s on every song but they always hit!
10. “The Future” (2017, Daymoon)
You can tell this one has the juice just from the first few seconds. There’s a slight menace to the guitar tone despite the low volume of the song.
9. “3fast” (2016, Rot Forever)
The Rot Forever opener is perhaps the most dynamic song on the album, switching tempos, volumes, and vocal deliveries; the guitar will drop out to let the bass take the spotlight. The loose sprawl is Exhibit A in the band’s Modest Mouse worship, although there was no talk of Wi-Fi in that lonesome crowded West.
8. “She’s On Fire” (2023, Pure Music)
This list is dominated by 2014-2019 Strange Ranger, but I’ve truly enjoyed the band’s late career electronic-ish pivot—No Light In Heaven and Pure Music both made my top ten of their respective years—but the music works more in album form than as individual songs. The “She’s On Fire” chorus is a heater, tapping into an intensity that didn’t exist in the rock albums.
I’m grateful I finally saw them live last fall; it was my favorite show of the year. The setlist was all 2020s material besides an impromptu and endearingly messy rendition of “Dom” (they seemed nostalgic to be back in Portland). The Pure Music stuff absolutely ripped live—I was banging my head.
7. “Icehouse” (2015, Fadeaway)
Now that’s some beautiful guitar tone. I don’t feel as much emotional connection here as with most other songs on this list, but it’s platonic ideal indie rock stuff and the muscular looping guitar solo that never ends pushes it into top ten territory.
6. “Planes In Front of the Sun” (2019, Remembering the Rockets)
Probably the single prettiest song in the catalog, one of the prime examples on Remembering the Rockets that proved Strange Ranger was gonna be a different thing than Sioux Falls. The song floats rather than drives, evoking the orange expanse pictured on the album cover.
5. “It’s You” (2021, No Light In Heaven)
No Light in Heaven has no shortage of genre-bending ideas and they all come together at the end for “It’s You.” This one you might just have to listen to yourself because I’m having trouble finding the right descriptors. Most importantly, it’s proof that the band’s talent for building a song’s momentum to an explosive climax stayed strong over the years, even with new machines and song structures.
4. “Stinks To Be You” (2015, Fadeaway)
I suppose this list-making exercise has placed me in the camp of slightly preferring pre-album Sioux Falls to Rot Forever Sioux Falls. The sounds are crisper, punchier, funnier. Lotta great guitar lines here, and the song is overflowing with energy. The lyrics would fit onto any contemporaneous dirtbag emo song, but the singing and riffs are actually good and not actively grating, so of course it’s not emo!
3. “Lights Off Speak Less” (2014, Lights Off For Danger)
Here’s the big guy: 12 minutes, multiple sections, the kind of shaggy song that can only be an album closer. It’s all great, but a five-minute version of “Lights Off Speak Less” would be competing for the number one slot on this list. When this song hits its groove in Act II, it’s peak performance—leading bass with a playful drum rhythm in tandem, perfectly deployed “na-na-na”s reminiscent of “All the Small Things,” and poetic couplets like “I fucked up, I made mistakes/We saw some titties, it wasn’t that great” and “At times I cry when I masturbate/Okay, not really but it feels that way.” A fun ride all the way through the extended instrumental outro.
2. “Most Perfect Gold of the Century” (2017, Daymoon)
A song in slow motion but always engaging. Coming at the very end of Daymoon, “Most Perfect Gold of the Century” provides the cathartic release of an album that often exists at a low hum. Isaac Eiger has such a strong command of melodic songwriting that even at this drawn-out cadence he sings lines that will get lodged in your head forever.
1. “Leona” (2019, Remembering the Rockets)
Just undeniable. Their perfect pop song, with verse melodies as catchy as the playful wordless chorus (it’s only appropriate that the top song features the strongest example of their signature move). A deceptively weird structure—no singing in the second half—but there’s more than enough sunny energy to sustain through the end as the band jams away the anxieties of growing up.
That’s all! Here’s the playlist, although you’ll need to hit up Bandcamp for #3, 4, 7, 12, and 13.