Lifeguard with TV Buddha and Bungee Jumpers

Album Overview

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.

Musical Style and Elements

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.

Experimental Pieces

And then there are the more experimental pieces Music for Three Drums (which surely references Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians) and 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.

Song Quality

But all of this would be mere hubris without the quality of the songs. The title track Ripped 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.

Lyric Interpretation

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 music that points to nothing outside of the interaction of the players themselves.

Event Information

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