During an evening performance in May of 2024 in Troy, NY, Meg Duffy and Greg Uhlmann asked Blue Ranger to improvise their set. Captured live by Evan Marré, The Yea is the logical conclusion of those deceptively simple instructions.

Over forty-five minutes, Blue Ranger— the quartet of brothers Josh and Evan Marré, Matt Griffin, and Connor Armbruster— paint a portrait of four musicians so deeply bound in a sound they’ve spent over half a decade honing together it can be rearranged at will, resulting in a transformative, expressionist sonic landscape. Familiar sounds define Blue Ranger’s reinterpretation of traditional folk rock structures: yearning slide guitar explorations; steady, light-footed bass; eager percussion and riding cymbal crashes; thoughtful but conservative synthesized accoutrements; masterful bow work driving electric squeals and mournful flourishes in equal measure. All are given a life of their own here, freed from the confinements of expectation and the necessary limitations of the song as a few minutes of instrumentally accompanied verse-chorus-verse.

Over two distinct movements, this live-captured improvisation veers those tones through the modes of expansive post-rock across ‘Heartbroken Voice’, and motorik-grounded interpretive free jazz on ‘No Bass Amp’. Blue Ranger’s marriage of measured spontaneity and command of familiar texture makes for a thrilling listen, inviting you back into the room of that special evening and immortalizing it, the recording allowing some new motif or movement to stick in your ear with each repeat listen. The few minutes of droning guitar that bookend both movements could occupy a lifetime. Brushed drums take on the form of curtains of spring rains past. Sprightly fiddle riffs become miniature symphonies become solitary lamentations. Frenetic keyboards and puncturing static feedback find their mirror image in an unflappable bassline. You hear that heartbroken voice crying out— but for whom? Heard another time, now an echo. This is just a fragment of the journey Blue Ranger is welcoming you along on. .

- Alex Hanse