Review Summary: headline: brilliant boys from Bozeman go buckwild
No Light in Heaven is absolutely fucking baffling, and I have no idea what to say about it. The release - described by Strange Ranger as a mixtape rather than album - covers an absurd amount of ground in 25 minutes with no concern for cohesion or accessibility. It will likely take weeks to get a grasp on this shit, but I don't have that kinda time, and besides, it feels oddly fitting to stream-of-consciousness a review for something as scattered and DIY as
No Light in Heaven. So, here goes.
No Light in Heaven sounds like
Amnesiac-era Radiohead colliding with punk-facing Trail of Dead in a high-speed vehicular accident while Burial plays out of a crackly radio near the scene. That's silly and borderline meaningless, but it's the best I got for a mixtape that starts with booming bass drops and full-on screaming in the aggressively atonal "In Hell", borderline self-parody in the hilarious "Pass Me By", and bookends the Tenement-esque banger "Demolished" with jazzy interludes that feel like transmissions from an alien planet. The band that mastered feel-good twinkly indie on the sublime
Remembering the Rockets just three years ago try their hand at heavily vocoded bangers (highlights "Needing You" and "It's You"); glitchy garage art-pop ("Cheap Returns/Back to My Home"); and an easy listening beat track that could have come from the same session as Radiohead's "Worrywort" ("Get Right Up to the Mic").
In short, absolutely none of this should work, and some of it frankly doesn't. The hit rate on
No Light in Heaven is inconsistent at best, but it's hard not to respect a band so brazenly throwing everything familiar out the window and going buckwild on a release like this. Strange Ranger are no strangers (heh) to change, having evolved from Modest Mouse-worshipping post-hardcore pushers to absolutely lovely mid-career Flaming Lips fanatics, and a bunch of other stuff in the meantime.
No Light in Heaven is unique in that it seems to catch them mid-evolution for the first time, right in the sometimes awkward spot between an unbridled success and god-knows-whatever they're gonna do next. Maybe mixtape is the right word for it after all: once you check your expectations for a fleshed-out album at the door,
No Light in Heaven has plenty to offer, even if there's no clear guide leading you on your way through its twists and turns.
