 jason nagel's new show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QaGVb-Khnk&feature=youtu.be&a "the empire of dresses" is song one! to all who came out this weekend, First Avenue & 7th St Entry, Hymie's Vintage Records, The MAGNOLIAS, The Sex Rays, Wowsville, J.W. Schuller, we thank you! 
Outside the Box
November 14, 2015 by Dave Hoenack Celebrating their silver anniversary, Rank Strangers have released not one, not two, but three albums this year. The third of these, The Box, is the subject of a release show/25th anniversary party tonight at 7th Street Entry. While producing a vinyl tryptic isn’t an unprecedented undertaking (the endearing and inventive folk duo Sudden Lovelys released three LPs in 2012, which we featured here), it is undeniably an impressive accomplishment. Few bands last twenty-five years, and fewer still hit their stride entering that second quarter century. Rank Strangers might have been a darling during those years when Minneapolis might have been Seattle, but that was a long time ago and today the band is better today for its unencumbered independence. The Star Tribune‘s reliable Chris Reimenschneider, who Thursday featured The Box by pointing out the band didn’t make one of the best local rock records of the year. “They released three of them,” he wrote on Thursday. We’ve already featured the first two records (Lady President here and Ringtones here) and we’ve spent nearly a year speculating on how the trilogy would be resolved, and whether its recurring themes — royalty, power, revolution, the end of the world — would be connected. If there really had been “a Rosetta stone or map key” as we speculated when Ringtones was released, we’re too slow-witted to find it. We called Mike Wisti’s typed lyric sheets “maddeningly dense” in that post, and we’ve pored over them as we have played these albums over and over. Once again the lyric sheet reads like Theodore Kaczynski’s manifesto if it had been edited by Tom Robbins, and while we get tangled trying to connect dots which may not be there, we enjoy the albums even more knowing the words (we are famous for making up words when we don’t know the actual lyrics — you should hear our impression of “Lady Marmalade”). There is nothing on the third album as dramatic as the reworking of “The Last Piranha” which appears as the penultimate track on Ringtones and first set us towards the theory it would all lead to a grand conclusion. Instead, after an hour and a half of anxiety over the end of times and everything leading up to it, Mike Wisti ends the trilogy with an assurance that “paupers and teachers reach out for preachers” and a simple flourish. T.S. Elliot told us this is the way the world would end. Honestly, we wouldn’t have it any other way. Like its predecessors, The Box is filled with catchy, inventive pop tunes, often in the vein of those late-era new wave records which found aging punkers exploring new directions and running out contracts. “Global Warming” is a brief interlude which approaches a genuinely serious topic without commentary, but provides one of the most enjoyable melodies in the trilogy, and on the other end “Bird Flu Blues” actually embodies a sense of anxious dread. The straight ahead rockers on The Box, a couple reappearing reworked from the previous albums (“The Lone Piranha” and “Halloween Arrives”), are worlds better than the middle-of-the-road stuff praised as presentably pious in the church of pop mediocrity. “The Empire of Dresses,” with an awesome sounding bass line played by Davin Odegaard, is one of our favorite songs of the year. And “Lone Piranha” here is presented with more energy than on the first album. Over the past few years Mike Wisti has engineered some uniquely mad records in Albatross Studio, most notably Grant Hart’s epic The Argument, which portrayed Milton’s “Paradise Lost” with aching intimacy at times (put Hart’s “I Will Never See My Home Again” in the context of the 2011 fire in his childhood home, and yes this is a subject which hits close to the heart here at Hymie’s). The Fuck Knights’ labored psych- rock sophomore statement Puke All Over Themselves (feature on our blog here) was recorded in Wisti’s studio at the same time. Its seems like these projects and others have bled into Rank Strangers’ willingness to try new things in this trilogy of albums. The result through three albums has been extremely successful without falling into the pitfalls of Sandinista!, which even for fans like us has overlong moments of indulgence. The three albums by Rank Strangers this year are pleasantly compact and cohesive, and it’s been a real pleasure to finally be able to listen to the three together. We expect all three are albums which will be favorites of ours for a long time. http://hymiesrecords.com/outside-the-box/ http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-music-notes-rank-strangers-tripled-rock/346911982/ Minnesota Music Notes: Rank Strangers' tripled rock Chris Riemenschneider Mike Wisti's scrappy trio marks its 25th anniversary with its third great record of 2015. November 12, 2015 — 2:37pm Mike Wisti’s Rank Strangers didn’t just release one of the best local rock albums of 2015. They released three of them. A reliable group that’s never been all that hotly hyped but also has never lacked in respect — call it the Summit EPA of local bands — the raggedly psychedelic and classically poppy basement-rock trio came up with a grand idea to mark the big occasion of its 25th anniversary this year: an album trilogy. Sure, I thought, when singer/guitarist and lone original Rank Stranger Wisti first sent word of his plans to issue three (vinyl) LPs by year’s end. If he and the guys do pull it off, the last record is sure to offer a bunch of throwaway tunes. Even Guided by Voices — a band Wisti’s group is often deservedly compared to — didn’t have that good of a batting average in its most hyper-prolific years. Here comes the third record, though, and it puts them at a thousand. Titled “The Box,” it follows the hard-blasting winter LP “Lady President” and summer’s more experimental “Ringtones,” and it might even be the most accessible of the batch. Wisti has a natural knack for clever studio work and ample time to do it, also being the operator of Albatross Recording (see: Grant Hart, Black Diet, Lucy Michelle). Here, the studio guru layers the songs with cool tinges of organ or horn parts but never buries his warped, witty, catchy writing style, apparent right away in the plunky opening ballad “333 Nowhere St.” and such Ray Davies-esque rockers as “The Empire of Dresses” and the all-too-localized “When the Bridge Fell.” The latter tune’s fearful tone permeates several other tracks, too, giving the record a bit of a paranoid vibe. It’s scary good anyway. With bassist Davin Odegaard and Shawn Davis, Wisti will have the new LPs in tow for the band’s official silver anniversary show Saturday at 7th Street Entry, also featuring the Magnolias, Sex Rays and Wowsville (9 p.m., $8-$10.) They’re also playing an in-store set at Hymie’s Vintage Records on Sunday (6 p.m., free).  uptown bar november 5 1990 rank strangers play first show.   |
Rank Strangers Archives
April 2019
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