by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
There’s a real magic to the music of Lifeguard—that un-replicable sense of true DIY scrappiness, of basement jams and intense record collecting. Their music has a high-powered buzz, every song sounds like a slab of raw amped-up energy barely contained by the confines of the classic punk three-piece form. Their excellent debut, Ripped and Torn, only seems to confirm this, with blasts of power pop colliding with no-wave angularity and heavy dub production. Sounds of twee pop, slacker rock, dance punk, and tape-manipulated noise ricochet against one another across thirty minutes of vital indie creativity. It’s the sort of pulse-pounding guitar music that’s both incredibly direct and meticulously put together.
Chatting to the band a few weeks before Ripped and Torn’s release, I saw a clear reflection of the record in their energy. They’re a band obsessed with bands, sounds and production, the minutia of the differences between tape reel sizes, and the necessity of making their own album art and gig posters. There's a raw rambunctiousness to them that reflects a young band still far from burnout despite how hard they’re working. If I had to guess what keeps them going, it’s the most obvious answer possible: music. Whether it's proudly discussing their hometown Chicago scene, the beauty of early Ramones production, or just talking about the bands they love, it's clear the DIY ethos isn't just an aesthetic for Lifeguard. It's a creed the band lives by.
Lifeguard by Grace Conrad
Devin Birse: So you guys have your debut album Ripped and Torn coming out very soon on Matador. How are you feeling about the big debut?
Kai Slater: It's great. We made it a long time ago and you would think we would hate it by now just because we've sat with the songs for so long. But we made the album in a real creative rush, the songs were recorded immediately. We‘re very excited about it and we're still really excited about it after all this time of sitting on it.
DB: The EPs are sonically very different to the album. Is there any reason behind the shift in sound?
Asher Case: I think a good amount of it, at least in terms of technical stuff, comes down to us changing producer. The EPs were made by the same person, our friend Mike Lust. They definitely sound like Electrical Audio to me, the studio we recorded them at.
So, there's a bit of deadness and digital plug in this to those recordings that I hear. It sounds like something that we're not super going for anymore. But for the new one, we worked with Randy Randall from No Age. He's such a creative person who just fires ideas at you, like at every second. To engage with that, it became a more idea-focused recording process. I think that really comes across because the record is a lot more varied than stuff we've done in the past.
KS: When we did the EPs and everything before then, we all recorded a lot. We did a lot of the studio stuff at Electrical Audio because it was cheaper, homey, and because it was built out of Steve Albini's old house. Those were obviously important things to us because we're so used to home recording and doing it yourself. So that studio seemed like the obvious thing for us to work at for a really long time, but then you're really stuck into that sound. Because it's an old grain silo, all the drums are going to be super roomy and shit. For Ripped and Torn, we were just like, “what do we actually listen to? What are the types of sounds that we like on records?” So we were drawing a lot more from old ‘70s and Dub Records and stuff like.
DB: I definitely hear the dub influence on it. It really reminded me, of a lot of cassette slacker rock stuff like Cleaners From Venus and Guided By Voices type. Were you were aiming for the production style to hit on that lofi aesthetic?
Isaac Lowenstein: There's parts of it recorded on 8-track cassette, 4-track, cassette, and then obviously the main record we did on a 16 track two inch tape and-
KS: One inch. Way more lo-fi.
IL: Sorry, whoops. It's true. It's half of the fidelity, man. Way more lo-fi than two inch.
KS: Two inch is stupid. Oh, my God. It's like just record on digital man.
IL: But we did that on one inch tape. I think the reason—especially in comparison to the previous releases we had at that point—was to capture us overloading a medium. Several takes were slightly clipping into the into the actual tape. So definitely the Guided By Voices thing was there, but also just classic punk records like how The Ramones recordings are really sort of messed up. It's all kind of just blowing out together.
It came from a realisation that that's sometimes where the true energy of a punk band comes from. Placing a band in the studio environment but not trying to recreate what it sounds like live, just capturing what this band sounds like in a vacuum, and they're kind of too loud to. All the controlled dynamics, and compression, and plugins, and whatever that modern rock recordings have can suck the energy out of a band that has a strong live identity. For us, it was about figuring out what from the live set needs to go into the recordings and it was not, y’know, the roomy drum sound or the kind of spacious documentarian recording style.
DB: You have a few interludes on there of quite no-wavey experimental noisy pieces. What was the inspiration behind having those on the album?
KS: We're really influenced by like bands like This Heat and Swell Maps, this band Laddio Bollocko even more so for me. I don't want to speak on behalf of them, but definitely for those bands there's a big aspect of splicing tape and having longer pieces condensed into different splices. We do a lot of improvisational stuff and a lot of noisier stuff.
In terms of talking about a cassette thing, we like the idea that you had this rock record that you dubbed over a noise tape or something. It's an aspect of the band that is just so much fun and important to us. Just how we like pop songs, it was important to keep it condensed, but still present.
DB: Do you use tape manipulation on any of the other tracks on the album?
IL: I don't know how much of that got into the main songs. But I think throughout the making of Ripped and Torn, we had a desire to put that in somehow, and it ended up being those three noisier parts. We were throwing Walkman stuff on top of a four track cassette on top of eight track cassette.
The analogue, idiosyncratic permanent commitment to tape was a big ethos for the whole thing. Getting stuck to a take. We could never replace a snare drum after we recorded straight to the tape. So I think apart from “Music for 3 Drums,” “Me and My Flashes,” and “Charlie’s Vox,” everything else was very permanent and committed to the analogue sound. So regardless of whether it was manipulated or not, tape was a very central part of the whole record.
DB: It sounds like it's something you wanted to be in the album from the outset. Were there any other elements that you wanted to bring into the record from the beginning?
KS: The album is not very wide, it's essentially mono. You're like recording things pretty cleanly, but you're doing it on tape that doesn't have the bandwidth to have that clean separation. Like the first Ramones record, the compression largely comes from how the instruments are interacting and running into each other on the tape. That’s something you get way less of with a big stereo field. So, it was important for us to have it be straight down the middle panning wise to have that bandwidth choked.
IL: We knew that we wanted that vintage quality of everything sort of clashing, but that idea for it being mono came from Randy [Randall]. After the session came and he started mixing, we got an e-mail from Randy that was like “hey these mixes might be working, but I'm going to try something completely new and give you a completely alternative mix for the whole record where everything is in mono.” That was what we ended up going with. We always knew that we wanted to achieve that sound, but mono ended up being the vessel.
DB: Were there any other ways that you think Randy particularly influenced the record where it wouldn't have been the same without his involvement?
IL: I think Randy had good insight on overdubbing and arranging because we generally leave a lot to chance in that department. We love the way those No Age records are constructed and all the shifts in fidelity, experiments, and recording like a rock band that’s crazy and free.
AC: I think elements of Ripped and Torn that are sparser is something that he affected out of us. A lot of the No Age stuff is acoustic instruments. It's basic stuff you can kind of embellish and have it not feel like noise or whatever. He's good at having that filter on ideas where everything would be there for a reason. It’s really nice to work with someone who's as passionate about it as you are.
IL: No Age is very good at taking out the filler. He was really helpful in letting us find a very concise total vision for the record. At the start, we got together and planned out the entire record like 2 days before we started tracking and was like production reference for this production reference for this. I think in terms of writing this record could have ended up very scattered and confused. I think there are ways in which combining all these ideas would end up just sounding a mess, but I think Randy was great at helping us figure out how to tie it all together into this complete half hour contained object. He was really great at turning the ideas into the record.
DB: Do you think you'd ever consider bringing tape manipulation into your live performancs, kind of like Mission of Burma?
KS: I mean it would be sick. Tape loops are fun. Right now, we're just trying to figure out how to get the dub elements and all the organ and stuff that’s on the record live. I feel like Isaac will have a spaceship of things.
IL: We're getting a mounted sort of modular all above me. It's going to look like Air, it's going to be awesome. [laughs]. With tape machines, they aren't making new ones, and they just break so much. Bringing any sort of gear on tour is risky and it will break probably. I would hate to be using a tape machine every day because it just breaks for sure. It’s an expensive hole to put yourself into, but I think if we're trying to do one off shows that sort of thing might work. But I don't know when I'm using cassette based stuff I'm always on the edge of my seat, worried that something is going to explode.
DB: Of course, you guys are a Chicago-based band. How do you feel Chicago has influenced your music and this album, in particular?
KS: We just grew as a band from just seeing our friends play and got influenced by seeing live shows with people we know in Chicago. There's still a DIY undercurrent that you kind of have to look for at this time, but it's still alive right now.
AC: When we were writing the songs, the record wasn't fully completed or even visualised, yet we would play those songs at shows, and those would usually be in Chicago. So I feel like the Chicago audience was getting the songs as soon as they were being written. If we can feel it working in Chicago, I think it's easier for us to be emboldened by that and keep making songs for the record or for the record.
DB: Like you have a natural sounding board through the Chicago crowd?
AC: Yeah.
DB: Are there any Chicago bands at the moment that you feel more people need to know about?
KS: Answering Machines, P. Noids.
IL: Bungee Jumpers. The same guy is in all three of those bands. Great stuff.
KS: Riddle M. It's this great, weird space bedroom music. He’s kind of like R Stevie Moore, Cleaners from Venus, or something like that. A weird cassette freak.
IL: Current Union TM is awesome. Nobody knows what their record is going to sound like, but they have one song that's out and it's brilliant.
KS: Sounds like ESG. Really good.
IL: Yeah, and like Public Image. What else? Love TV Buddha. They’re close friends.
KS: My roommates, yeah.
DB: You mentioned DIY earlier. Do you feel like that notion of a DIY spirit is something you guys are aiming to capture in your music?
KS: Ohh yeah, I mean it's inseparable. The goal for everything is DIY is most important over anything.
DB: I remember reading you guys do you own album art and tour posters as well?
IL: Yeah. No one knows us better than ourselves is what we’ve realised. It's come back to bite us where we’ve had to make so much stuff. It would probably suit us better at some point to have a friend or something do it. But I think it pays off to see all the posters and the artwork, especially surrounding an album, and to have this cohesive theme throughout it all.
DB: Going back to the album its title is called, Ripped and Torn. What was the source behind that title? When I got the album, it had a lovely press release by David Keenan where he points to zines and Lester Bangs writing on Pere Ubu, but what does it mean to you?
AC: I liked what he said about it, how it could be this reference to a fanzine it could also be just like reference to some weird Pere Ubu comparison.
KS: We had a song I had already written a hook line for and it's like “your teacher’s pet leaving you ripped and torn.” It was just an old song I had written and so we made that the chorus. We're deeply indebted to zines and the zine culture. I'm really revealing that it's kind of about a zine, but it could be anything.
IL: There’s definitely something to you the record perhaps being “ripped and torn” together. It's a combination of a ton of stuff, there's all kinds of spliced tape and different fidelities. It’s this big collage and I think the title kind of jumped out to us. It made sense for what the record ended up being.
DB: You guys are involved in Hallo Gallo Zine. do you think that's impacted your work in Lifeguard?
KS: I mean, sure. It's important to listen to the same music and be obsessed with the same stuff. That's how great bands write songs. A lot of the time we have different avenues of influences, but we've all been super into punk rock. Stuff like Robyn Hitchcock and Dolly Mixture I consider having an ethos that we share, both musically and how we make stuff in terms of the zine.
AC: In terms of the zine, we did one interview where all of us interviewed a band together. We interviewed this band from Athens, GA called Limbo District. It was a really interesting setting for it to happen because we were interviewing them as three people and talking to one of the people who was in the band. In terms of interviews that directly inform your band or your music, I feel like that was a really intensely creative and emboldening thing for us. It doesn’t happen a lot but it was a nice instance of it.
DB: Do you feel like there's anything you've been listening to recently that you think will influence the shape of your music to come?
AC: I've been getting really into Mope Grooves. It's really dancey, fun, and playful but it’s also a bit tinkery sounding. It's small with toy pianos and electronic drums. I feel like that's an interesting thing that I'm trying to let it influence how I'm playing in this band.
KS: I had a huge explosion of Soft Boys influence this past year and the Homosexuals and stuff like that. Which is stuff you can kind of hear already. We always listen to a lot of Oasis, so.
IL: These are classics, but on the other side, I have not been able to turn off Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way. There are ways those records hide their manipulation and sometimes it just lets you space out and then wait for the song to restart. I've been really into that stuff. Also, Ripped and Torn sounds very “cassette,” but I'd love to try making a hi-fi record recorded onto tape. Like hi-fi for the 70s. I'd love to hear a record of ours sound like Fleetwood Mac. It sounds beautiful, y’know. I like the idea of hi-fi but I don't love is the modern plug-in, surgical EQ sound. But I think there's a real magic in capturing a beautiful drum sound to tape.
Ripped and Torn is out now via Matador Records.