{"id":180249,"date":"2025-06-13T05:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T05:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/180249\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T05:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T05:09:10","slug":"lifeguard-ripped-and-torn-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/180249\/","title":{"rendered":"Lifeguard: Ripped and Torn Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kai Slater, the 20-year-old guitarist and co-vocalist of rising post-punk band Lifeguard<\/a>, edits and produces a zine called Hallogallo. Named after a song by Krautrock pioneers Neu!<\/a> and inspired by punk and mod revival zines from the \u201980s, it is painstakingly handmade, detailing and in turn fueling a brilliant young DIY art-punk scene in Chicago that\u2019s generated bands like Horsegirl<\/a>, Friko<\/a>, and Post Office Winter. Lifeguard\u2019s debut album Ripped and Torn\u2014itself named after an early and influential British punk zine\u2014is curious and exciting in all the same ways as Hallogallo. Though its medium and methods might be familiar, the album is made with such intensity and conviction that it feels essential: This is the rare modern album that makes indie rock sound life-changingly important.<\/p>\n

The thrills emerge suddenly and don\u2019t let up. \u201cIt Will Get Worse\u201d begins with a lazy guitar and haymaker cymbal crashes that could easily have been borrowed from the last album by young post-punk prodigies to feel this vital, Parquet Courts<\/a>\u2019 Light Up Gold<\/a>. But the pace changes on a dime and races forwards, propelled by Isaac Lowenstein\u2019s skittish drums and Asher Case\u2019s devastatingly simple bassline. Slater\u2019s guitar is a serrated blade, top-end and atonal, but he pulls back the moment it\u2019s called for, switching to sliding octaves like a spindly young Tom DeLonge. He sings \u201cno one around here\u201d over and over again, a mysterious but simple lyric that sticks to the song like freshly gored chewing gum. Halfway through he eschews lyrics entirely and replaces them with la-la-las, demonstrating a refreshing and well-earned confidence in a three-note melody.<\/p>\n

It would be easy for a band like Lifeguard, particularly one so young, to fall into noise for noise\u2019s sake, hammering the same atonality to mask a lack of imagination. Instead, they focus on their hooks, which often appear from nowhere. The shifty monotone of \u201cLike You\u2019ll Lose\u201d stutters into a surprisingly mournful-sounding chorus, while the harder-edged \u201cFrance And\u201d breaks into a refrain consisting of two notes and three individual words: \u201cOh, oh\/I am, I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, a theme throughout the album is how good both Slater and Case are at singing \u201coh\u201d sounds, either as part of a word or just on its own. Slater\u2019s voice is higher and raspier, better suited to the power pop he channels and the music he makes alone as Sharp Pins<\/a>; Case\u2019s deeper, icier voice is directly influenced by the \u201980s new wave bands he loves. But they both pronounce \u201coh\u201d with a cultivated nonchalance that bursts through the compression on the mics. It ties them to the history of this music\u2014evidence of pop and punk having gone back and forth across the Atlantic countless times over the past 50 years. But it\u2019s also evidence of a truth Lifeguard seem to understand on an elemental level: There\u2019s no need to clutter up a mix or overwrite a song when you can make a vowel sound that good on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kai Slater, the 20-year-old guitarist and co-vocalist of rising post-punk band Lifeguard, edits and produces a zine called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[31104,77,269,16,15,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-180249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}