Perhaps more so than for any of their peers, the sudden shuttering of Strange Ranger’s former label home led to a total reinvention of sound following 2019’s occasionally-jangly dream-pop opus Remembering the Rockets, with that new direction previewed on the compelling 2021 mixtape No Light in Heaven—their first release through Fire Talk Records. Cozying up to chillwave conventions and various other experimental electronic concepts (including harsh noise on the jarring opener “In Hell”), the release proved less an anomaly than an indication of things to come when the band announced their first proper album through their new label, Pure Music.
With that record’s July 21 release date fast approaching, today they’ve shared another cut from the release in the form of the characteristically unclassifiable “Way Out,” a nostalgic look at both the wildly colorful popular music of the 1980s and vocalist Isaac Eiger’s youth. “I wrote this one while going through my memories of being a teenager in Montana and then it got all Biblical for some reason,” Eiger shares of the new-wavey jam—which erupts into a wailing sax solo in the final minute. “We produced it at this house in the woods and I remember feeling extremely alert, almost manic working on it late at night. At the time, we thought of it as a sort of condensed Talk Talk song but I’m not sure if it ended up that way.”
Check out a rainy-night visualizer for the track below, and pre-order Pure Music here.
