How Strange, Innocence

How Strange, Innocence is the first album recorded by post-rock band Explosions in the Sky, released on January 17, 2000. It is their only album for the Sad Loud America label. Initially, only 300 copies were issued in the form of CD-Rs. Due to many requests from fans, the album was remastered from the original tapes, given new artwork, and reissued on CD by Temporary Residence Limited on October 11, 2005.

The album was also released in a limited edition, 300 copies, double LP 180-gram vinyl on Ruined Potential records. The record was released in 5 different colors (black, blue, red, gray, and white). The black, blue, and gray versions came with a special insert. The band sold the vinyl version exclusively on their 2004 tour. On July 4, 2019, a vinyl re-issue and streaming platform release (along with 2005's The Rescue) was announced for August 16.

"How Strange, Innocence" was our first attempt at an album. We recorded it in January 2000 in Austin: recording took two days, mixing one day, mastering one day. Altogether we pressed 300 CD-R copies of this album…We had been a band about seven months when we recorded these songs. A lot of feelings (excitement/confusion/glimpses of visions/waking dreams/inability to play instruments) went into this record, but we didn't quite know what to do with those feelings, none of us had even really been in a studio before, and it shows in the recording, the songs show it, too–it's a young record. There are no tricks in it. There's a lightness in a few of the songs that we probably won't reach again. It sounds strange to say that instrumental songs are about something, but to us these songs were/are about such things as a couple walking through the park on a winter day, a child playing on 70's shag carpet, the story of a boy hero leading a revolution against the tyranny of the coal mines. We've had a bit of a love/embarrassment relationship with the record. At certain points along the way several of us wanted to buy back all the copies and burn them. Listening now to this album, it almost seems like a different band composed of four different people.