Lifeguard : Ripped and Torn
After playing together for just one year, Chicago trio Lifeguard released their debut album Dive, an early and raw document of a group of teenagers honing a nascent but noisy sound. Dive wasn’t widely distributed, its lo-fi sound a snug fit for a cassette-only release that they issued as something of a milemarker. “[I]t was really important that we put those songs out when we did so that people can kind of see how we were progressing,” the band said in a 2021 interview, possessing a canny wisdom in their youth to capture their growth as it was happening. But even in their early stages, Lifeguard proved capable of crafting post-hardcore songs with rhythmic complexity and an imposing presence, navigating the space between Unwound and Sonic Youth on early highlights such as “Fishnet” and “Unfold.”
The fundamentals of Lifeguard’s approach have remained intact in the five years since they released that punchy but fuzzy debut, while they’ve put a greater emphasis on the finer details. Their 2022 EP Crowd Can Talk and 2023 EP Dressed In Trenches, reissued and released by Matador respectively, brought added clarity to their time-signature twisting bruisers and hard-driving post-punk anthems, tightening their musicianship while drawing their hooks up out of the murk. All the while, Kai Slater has flexed his jangle-pop muscle with side project Sharp Pins (making this his second standout record in less than 12 months), exploring some playfully bright new wave that’s likewise bled back into the harsher and pricklier dirges of his other band.
Lifeguard’s second album Ripped and Torn, much like its predecessor, offers a snapshot of a point in time for a rapidly progressing band. But given how much has happened since then, they’ve grown into a much more complex and versatile group, one whose emphasis on strong riffs and rhythmic chops have flourished into more experimental impulses and an embrace of even weirder and more wonderful detours and derailments. Recorded with Randy Randall of L.A. punks No Age, who allows more than a little haze and grit back into their sound, Ripped and Torn eases back on the taut, metronomic approach of their previous two EPs as they embrace a more brilliantly chaotic alchemy.
While Lifeguard fully embrace the possibilities of the studio through the sonic playground of Ripped and Torn, a kinetic live energy remains essential to their dynamic. The opening burst of “A Tightwire” is caught between post-hardcore bombast and raw, garage rock bashing, interrupting their explosive eruptions with jarring bursts of dissonance that serve to provide the melodic elements with an even brighter luster. The 97-second “(I Wanna) Break Out” captures an incendiary post-punk intensity, channeling early Wire or Mission of Burma as they burn with brilliant energy. And first single “It Will Get Worse” adopts a more explicit pop presence, like a dirtier, more abrasive version of Slater’s jangly Sharp Pins project.
Though they’ve already proven themselves as musicians and songwriters, with Ripped and Torn, their focus is more on shaping their sound. While abstract studio experiments such as “Me and My Flashes” and “Music for 3 Drums” show what kind of transient random noise bursts they can conjure in their studio downtime, moments like early single “Under Your Reach,” opening with a dissonant organ drone and dub-inspired bassline before catalyzing those raw elements into a richly layered post-punk standout, reveal an even greater sense of unpredictability in their songwriting. “How to Say Deisar” pulses and scrapes in a thrilling and twitchy noise-rock disco, whereas the abrasive arpeggios and booming drum echoes of “Like You’ll Lose” reframe This Heat through dub filters, doing their influences justice while weaving them into an even greater whole.
Ripped and Torn seems to open up a new chapter for Lifeguard, one less about charting their growth than seeing it flourish. When the album arrived in my inbox as a download, its ID3 tags simply said “Album,” and maybe I’m reading too much into things here, but that minor detail would seem to suggest that this is the one that marks the band’s arrival. From well-oiled unit to dynamic musical force to playfully unpredictable sonic alchemists, Lifeguard’s evolution is taking place at an accelerated rate.
Label: Matador
Year: 2025
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Lifeguard : Ripped and Torn
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