From The Wipers and Dead Moon, to Heatmiser and Hazel, Portland, OR has historically bred some of the country’s best and most unique punk bands — in part because the city’s cheap cost of living and progressive ambience has long accommodated the “young artist” lifestyle (for better or worse).

But Portland is changing. A combination of rising rents and lack of infrastructure for all-ages music is making the city less habitable for young, DIY-minded bands. At the start of the decade, Portland was still considered a mecca for all-ages music. Today, it’s tough to find a Portland venue that even hosts all-ages shows.

It’s a plight that 23-year-old Isaac Eiger and 24-year-old Fred Nixon — the members of Strange Ranger, who just recently changed their name from Sioux Falls — are all too familiar with. Since relocating from Bozeman, MT to Portland in 2011, Strange Ranger have largely been ignored by the city’s cultural arbiters. Even now that the group’s debut, Rot Forever, has achieved the blogosphere equivalent of going gold — the album received a positive review from Pitchfork and is prematurely being dubbed an Album Of The Year contender by a number of online outlets — most older Portland writers and promoters don’t even seem aware that the band exists.  

But to the horde of minors who attend every one of their sweat-soaked basement shows, Strange Ranger are a bellwether, and understandably: they’re local kids making good, and songs like “Copy/Paste” and “Soaked in Sleep” highlight lyricist Eiger’s preternatural talent for poeticizing weedonistic, millennial malaise. 

We recently caught up with Eiger and Nixon over mall foodcourt Chinese and talked for an hour about everything from Korn to the recording process of Rot Forever. Below are 10 things you should know about Strange Ranger. 

They Were Never From Sioux Falls 

Despite their original name, the group has no real connection to Sioux Falls, SD. Eiger took inspiration from a comment his mother made when he told his family that he would be pursuing music instead of attending college. “My mom was not psyched on me doing this [instead of going] to college,” says Eiger. “She told me that if I didn’t go to college and did this band, I would end up drunk at a bus stop in Sioux Falls.”

After realizing that their name was potentially offensive — "sioux" is considered a derogatory term to some indigenous tribes — the group changed their name to Strange Ranger, a name shared by Eiger and Nixon's record label.

Frontman Isaac Eiger was a Blues Guitar Prodigy

“Isaac was a blues rock prodigy in the Caribbean,” Nixon says with a snicker. Eiger reluctantly corroborates: “My parents are professors, and were teaching at this medical school on this tiny island called Saint Maarten for a couple of years when I was 11 through 13, and I played blues guitar at these gross bars every week,” he divulges.

“I didn’t really want to do it, but I think I was told I wanted to do it, and I liked everybody patting me on the back afterwards and saying, like, ‘those are some serious pentatonic scales, little guy!’”

They’re Currently Drummer-Less

Mere hours before our interview, Eiger and Nixon amicably parted ways with Ben Scott — the drummer who performed on Rot Forever. But there’s no juice: “It was totally mutual, and we love Ben,” Eiger says. Scott still plays in Portland screamo band Dowager.

They Aren’t Set on Portland

The Portland darlings have hinted at wanting to relocate to Philadelphia, a nerve center for modern, punk-flecked indie rock, although they say that nothing’s concrete. “It’s the epicenter for the sort of music we like and what we want to be associated with, but we have no firm plans,” says Nixon.

Isaac Eiger and Fred Nixon Are Bound by a Shared Love for the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Strange Ranger’s earliest influences include Bozeman band The Touchers and classic rock lodestars like Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix and the Clash — but the band that Eiger and Nixon bonded the most over were the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“I still maintain that there are some great Red Hot Chili Peppers songs,” Eiger says. “And John Frusciante is a great guitarist — in a cool way, not in a lame way.” 

They Also (Sort of) Like Korn

Eiger and Nixon’s method for determining whether or not a song is good is if they’d “rather listen to it than Korn” — a band they feel perfectly embodies the dividing line between quality and inanity. “Korn is sick, but they also suck,” says Eiger. “It’s masked by this macho, tough guy thing, but underneath that there are good hooks, and it’s satisfying in a really stupid, primal way.”

…And “Drops of Jupiter” by Train

The group also have a soft spot for the early ‘00s Train hit “Drops of Jupiter” — a favorite among soccer moms and muzak playlist curators everywhere. “We had this astounding insight that ‘Drops of Jupiter’ would be an amazing song if it were by Oasis,” says Nixon, “but instead, it’s by Train, who are so inherently lame, and so a lot of people just [write it off].”

If You Couldn’t Already Guess, They Don’t Believe in Guilty Pleasures

Strange Ranger’s championing of cheesy music might just seem like trollish, ironic attitudinizing, but Eiger and Nixon insist that they actually just like a lot of bands that most scenesters think are really dumb.

“I still think there’s this pretty obnoxious indie snobbery with music, where people just refuse to like things that they feel like they can’t like — we’re all about embracing just liking whatever,” says Nixon.

‘Rot Forever’ was Recorded in 10 Days

Rot Forever is a sprawling double LP that boasts 16 tracks and clocks in at over an hour in length. Amazingly, it was recorded in only 10 days. “We basically just got together and played the parts the way we played them live,” says Nixon. The duo is currently demoing a new album, which they anticipate being much more of a “studio creation.”

They’re Over ‘Heavy’

Strange Ranger have been lumped into the nebulous category of bands participating in a so-called “‘90s revival,” and while elements of Rot Forever are unmistakably reminiscent of indie rock forebears like Built To Spill and Pavement, Eiger and Nixon don’t completely identify with that tag. 

They claim that their next album will likely forego the heavier, emo-leaning tendencies of Rot Forever for a more subdued and textured sound. “The Microphones are going to be a huge [influence on the new material],” says Eiger. “Also, The Moon & Antarctica by Modest Mouse and a lot of ripping off Alex G.”