Of the few memories that linger from 2011, rising above that blur is Rangers’ Pan Am Stories, an album that played out like one long leisure groove into an eternal sunset. Pan Am Stories was like being the sky pilot that’s cruising at a pace that keeps the red hues on the horizon and that materialized into tracks like “Zombie (Day)” and “Zeke’s Dream”.
Turns out the trans-American behind Rangers, Joe Knight was still out there, living for those sunset jams as he traveled from the Bay Area to central Texas. That journey was documented in 2013 on Scraps, a double volume esoterica collection released on Bezoar Formations. Not Not Fun is handling a second wind of the collection by distilling the pieces down to a version entitled, Reconsider Lounge. In the three years since Pan Am Stories, not much has changed for Joe Knight. The shimmery distortion, the lackadaisical whimsy, the groove-emphasis; it’s all returned on Reconsider Lounge, like the consistency of a hotel chain along the highway with the same cruddy 70s carpet in every location.