by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
Lifeguard are the sort of indie band you can believe in. There is no generic here, no forgettable listening, aesthetic ambiguity, or overwrought attempts at false complexity. The band carries the sort of perfected aesthetic unity and precision that it takes most three albums to figure out. On their debut they’ve nailed it out of the gate; the image and the sound of a new whirring Chicago youth beat. But none of it feels forced. Ripped and Torn never appears as an album made through rigorous contortion, or some grand statement on indie rock here and now. Rather, it’s the clear product of three music-obsessive young adults. Ripped and Torn is the result of those kids you knew back in high school, the ones who had everything together musically getting noticed by the right people. It's more than that actually, because Lifeguard has something those kids probably didn’t: vision, focus, and clarity.
That vision is what makes Ripped and Torn such a brilliant debut. Rather than releasing a selection of live favourites mastered cleanly and precisely, the band has instead opted to make a gloriously noisy slab of mono-pop. Gone is the Electrical Audio-recorded second coming of post-hardcore. We could see it coming from guitarist Kai Slater’s jangly slacker rock side project Sharp Pins, and the band's work interviewing legends of 80s British indie-pop in Hallogallo zine, but now that it's here the sound is incredible in both its familiarity and its originality. There are hints of slacker pop that echo against the band's motorik tight grooves, slices of British dance-punk revival jittering between a dubby production that casts back to the roots of the sound. Lifeguard are a band that knows bands, their styles, their history, and why their sound works, but they're never vultures or revivalists. Rather like the great art punks of the late seventies and early eighties they rip and tear apart these sounds and ideas with surgical precision. Restitching the pieces together into phenomenal three-minute slabs of Frankenstein punk that emanate a roaring radiant electricity.
The album's powerhouse production courtesy of No Age’s Randy Randall turns the songs into shotgun slugs of noise and melody. Opener “A Tightwire” sounds like the moment a bomb explodes extended 2 minutes and 19 seconds. Isaac Lowenstein's drums thrash with the speed of an Uzi, Asher Case’s bass ensnares their chaos as Slater echoes out a mix of hypnotic Charles Hayward riffs and droning distortion. The whole thing comes together to sound like This Heat’s horizontal hold remixed into a blast of mutant pop. Most tracks follow a similar vision, taking the tones and rhythms of the sonic outer reaches and remoulding them into indie rock excellence. Elsewhere they chart into no wave with the freaked out guitar solo of “How To Say Deisar” and the manic distortion of “France And.” A few tracks on it go even further taking the form of short dissonant tape experiments in the style of Swell Maps. But what remains just as consistent is the band's ability to bring everything together into moments of incredible melody. It’s those glimpses that allow Lifeguard to truly shine. Moments such as the grooving pre-chorus of “How To Say Desiar” the stripped-back rattles of “Ripped + Torn” or the incredible jangle of lead single “It Will Get Worse” are where they mark themselves as true masters of their domain.
Often they resemble the late great Women in their ability to meld no wave with pop, but where Women’s use of drone and tempo led to a harmonious marriage Lifeguard’s sound is perpetually on the verge of combustion. Their mix of psychedelic group vocals with shouts that desperately rattle through the mix. The way Slater’s shimmering guitar work lies in the eternal conflict between Branca's totalism and a Robyn Hitchcock jangle. The rhythm sections dance between dubbed-out groove and hardcore crunch. The compact mono production. It leaves the album pieces rattling against each other, but it works incredibly. The various shards and ideas are easily identifiable but the sound it creates is distinct and unique. It contains that same odd chaos magic as Cleaners From Venus or Guided By Voices, the different ideas and styles nearly ripping each other apart only to coalesce into something shimmering in its outsider beauty.
Of course, it would be wrong to claim Lifeguard are outsiders, whether it's through the gigs they put on, the Chicago bands they rep, or the zine they publish. They're a band attached firmly to their young and ever-inventive Chicago community, but there’s something about their sound that few other guitar albums touch on. A sense of real-deal belief in the power that a classic punk three-piece is capable of. Isn’t that the real spirit of this whole indie guitar thing? The fact that the real magic lies not in hi-fi production or ensemble bands, but rather in a group with real energy kicking out the jams. It makes you want to call Lifeguard are indie royalty based off their debut alone which is a hard claim to argue for. But just give Ripped and Torn a listen and tell me you're not tempted to.