Lifeguard – ‘It Will Get Worse’ + Debut Album
OUT JUNE 6 ON MATADOR RECORDS
WATCH VIDEO FOR FIRST SINGLE
ON TOUR IN UK, EU, AND NORTH AMERICA
THIS SUMMER
Praise for Lifeguard:
“The Chicago three-piece (…) draw on the dissonant, melodic sounds of alt-rock heroes, but forge their own path” – The Observer ‘Artist To Watch’
“A fresh addition to US alt rock’s rich canon, headbangers everywhere will approve” –
Music Week
“Urgent, existential noise-rock” – NME
“Nothing short of pure, menacing excitement” – DIY
The band has also announced a full slate of UK, EU, and US tour dates, which will kick off in June, including dates in London, Brighton, Manchester and Bristol. Find a complete itinerary and a text on the album from author David Keenan below.
The youthful trio of Asher Case (bass, baritone guitar, vocals), Isaac Lowenstein (drums, synth), and Kai Slater (guitar, vocals) 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.
Recorded last year in Chicago with producer Randy Randall (No Age), the album captures a claustrophobic scrappiness that evokes the feeling and energy of house parties and tightly-packed rooms, where ears are easily overwhelmed, and ragged improvisations connect with the same force as melodic hooks.
David Keenan on Ripped and Torn:
Ripped and Torn, the debut album by Chicago three-piece Lifeguard, 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 kind of 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 of the first wave of garage bands, 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 Asher Case on bass, the machine gun percussion that Isaac Lowenstien plays almost like a lead instrument, and that flame-thrower guitar that Kai 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 – “Music for Three Drums” (which surely references Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians), “Charlie’s Vox” – 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 alla this would be mere hubris without the quality of the songs. The title track “Ripped & Torn” suggests yet another take on the title, which is 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 top of a massive dub/dirge hybrid. “It Will Get Worse” is pure unarmoured pop-punk crush while “Under Your Reach” almost channels the UK 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, by Randy Randall of No Age, is moody as fuck. 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 player’s themselves.
And sure, there’s a naivety to even believing you could possibly do that. But perhaps that’s what I have been chasing across this entire piece, 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 me wanna believe, all over again.
1. A Tightwire
2. It Will Get Worse
3. Me and My Flashes
4. Under Your Reach
5. How to Say Deisar
6. (I Wanna) Break Out
7. Like You’ll Lose
8. Music for 3 Drums
9. France And
10. Charlie’s Vox
11. Ripped + Torn
12. T.L.A
TOUR DATES
June 6 – Berlin, DE @ Neue Zukunft
June 9 – London, UK @ Lexington
June 10 – Brighton, UK @ Dust
June 11 – Manchester, UK @ The Castle
June 12 – Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade (instore)
June 13 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique (Witloof Bar)
June 15 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
June 28 – Chicago, IL, US @ Thalia Hall
June 29 – St. Louis, MO, US @ The Sinkhole
July 1 – Nashville, TN, US @ Blue Room
July 2 – Columbus, OH, US @ Ace of Cups
July 4 – Toronto, ON, CA @ The Baby G
July 5 – Montreal, QC, CA @ L’escogriffe
July 6 – Kingston, NY, US @ Tubby’s
July 8 – Medford, MA, US @ Deep Cuts
July 10 – Philadelphia, PA, US @ Warehouse on Watts
July 12 – Washington, DC, US @ Songbyrd
July 13 Raleigh, US @ NC Kings
July 15 – Atlanta, GA, US @ Altar
July 16 – Memphis, TN, US @ B-Side
July 17 – New Orleans, LA, US @ Gasa Gasa
July 19 – Austin, TX, US @ Mohawk (Inside)
July 20 – Denton, TX, US @ Rubber Gloves
July 22 – Albuquerque, NM, US @ Launchpad
July 23 – Phoenix, AZ, US @ Valley Bar
July 24 – Los Angeles, CA, US @ Zebulon
July 26 – San Francisco, CA, US @ Bottom of the Hill
July 28 – Portland, OR, US @ Polaris
July 30 – Seattle, WA, US @ Baba Yaga
July 31 – Boise, ID, US @ The Shredder
Aug 2 – Denver, CO, US @ Hi Dive
Aug 4 – Kansas City, MO, US @ Varsity Club
Aug 5 – Minneapolis, MN, US @ Zhora Darling
Aug 6 – Milwaukee, WI, US @ X-Ray Arcad