THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The youthful trio of Asher Case, Isaac Lowenstein and Kai Slater have been making music together since they were in high school, nearly a quarter of their lives. Noisy and immediate, cryptic but heartfelt, they draw inspiration from punk, dub, power-pop and experimental sounds, and bring them all together in explosive inspiration as Lifeguard.
Over the last two summers, their EPs documented the band’s early, earnest, studio explorations. But their tremendous shows, anchored by Lowenstein’s rock-steady backbeat, hinted that something greater was waiting in the wings. On the Chicago trio’s debut album Ripped And Torn, the barbed-wire sound frames Slater and Case’s rich two-part harmonies and collagiste lyrics. Producer Randy Randall (No Age) captures a claustrophobic scrappiness that conjures the feeling and energy of the house parties and live shows, where ears are easily overwhelmed, and ragged improvisations connect with the same force as melodic hooks.
The band remain a singular and intimate space where freedom, noise, and melody find visceral form. “The physical element is something we’re all very together on,” explains Slater. “The immediacy of making music. The instant pleasure and satisfaction of it.”
Ripped And Torn may or may not take its title from the legendary Scottish punk fanzine of the same name. Or perhaps it references the torn T-shirts that rock writer Lester Bangs claimed the late Pere Ubu founder Peter Laughner died for “in the battle fires of his ripped emotions.” Or maybe it points to the trio’s ferociously destabilising take on melodic post-punk and high-velocity hardcore, signposting their debt to the year zero aesthetics that would reignite wild improvisational songforms with muzzy garage Messthetics in a way rarely extrapolated this side of Dredd Foole & The Din.
Either way, Lifeguard stake their music on the kind of absolute sincerity reminsicent of the first wave of garage bands that took rock at its word, while simultaneously cutting it up with parallel traditions of freak. The half-chanted, half-sung vocals are hypnotic. Songs aren’t so much explicated as they are exorcised, as though the melodies are plucked straight from the air through the repeat-semaphoring of Case on bass, the machine gun percussion that Lowenstein plays almost like a lead instrument, and that flame-thrower guitar that Slater sprays all over the ever-circling rhythm section. Indeed, the trio play around an implied centre of gravity with all of the brain-razzing appeal of classic minimalism, taking three-minute hooks into the zone of eternal music by jamming in — and out — of time. And then there are the more experimental pieces — like Music for Three Drums (which surely references Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians) — that reveal the breadth of Lifeguard’s vision, incorporating a kind of collaged DIY music that fully embraces the bastardised avant garde of margin walkers like The Dead C, Chrome and Swell Maps.
But all of this would be mere hubris without the quality of the songs. The title track suggests yet another take on the title — the evisceration of the heart. Here we have a beautifully brokedown garage ballad, with the band coming together to lay emotional waste to a song sung like a transmission from a lonely ghost. Like You’ll Lose goes even deeper into combining dreamy automatic vocals with steely fuzz on a massive dub/dirge hybrid. It Will Get Worse is pure unarmoured pop-punk crush while Under Your Reach almost channels the DIY of The Television Personalities circa Part Time Punks but with a militant interrogation of sonics that would align them more with This Heat. Plus the production is moody AF. Are they really singing “words like tonality come to me” on T.L.A.?! If so, it would suggest that Lifeguard are one of those rare groups who can sing about singing, who can play about playing, and who, despite the amount of references I’m inspired to throw around due to the voracity of their approach, are capable of making a music that points to nothing outside of the interaction of the players themselves.
And sure, there’s a naivety to even believing you could possibly do that. But that’s the quality of openness that Lifeguard bring to their music. You can tell these three have been playing together since junior high/high school: The music feels youthful, unburdened, true to itself, even as it eats up comparisons. Lifeguard play underground rock like it might just be as serious as your life, but with enough playful ardour to convince you that youth is a quality of music, and not just of age. With a sound that is fully caught up in the battle fires of their own ripped emotions, Lifeguard make you wanna believe all over again.”
