Now that music has become this constantly inward-looking reflection of itself, the move is elevating above the stuff that all sounds vaguely like the other stuff and catapulting a sound we might be familiar with to new places. With their latest record, Pan Am Stories, Rangers get pretty close. On a basic level, this is fried, wobbly psych rock, but the album taken as a whole feels transcendent and almost glitters. On its own, "Conversations on a Jet Stream" is a good window into what an album's worth of this stuff is like. On its own, it sounds like something you've already heard. Not like a lost classic so much as a lost b-side that you just assume only you like, until you realize its everyone's underdog favorite. Pan Am Stories is out soon on Not Not Fun.
Download: Rangers, "Conversations on a Jet Stream"