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bout a year ago, Lifeguard had an epiphany. They’d been hammering away on a 10-minute noise suite in their hometown of Chicago, layering waves of improvised cacophony into a fearsome slab of sound that they hoped would anchor their full-length debut. Then they realized they didn’t need it.
“We had all these pop songs, but for some reason, we felt the need to have this more punishing thing in the middle, to establish some coolness or something,” recalls the trio’s drummer, Isaac Lowenstein, 18. “But that’s actually stupid. Like, who are we doing this for?”
Lifeguard have won an enviable reputation as a band to watch in the last two years, based largely on the uncompromising art-punk intensity of their early EPs and live shows. But that’s not all they’re into — as anyone who’s seen one of those shows and witnessed them break into an energetic cover of the Jam’s 1977 power-pop single “In the City” can tell you. “We did ‘In the City’ just because we wanted to, and it was like, ‘Let’s do this more,’” recalls singer-guitarist Kai Slater, 20. “Especially in the post-punk realm, it can get kind of nihilistically unmelodic, and we really don’t connect with that. We connect more with melody.”
Ripped and Torn, out June 6 on Matador Records, still features plenty of distressed instrumentation and feedback-drenched atmosphere. But the band uses those qualities in the service of some of the year’s tightest, catchiest rock songs, full of hooks that will ricochet around your head all summer. “For me, a big part of Lifeguard forever has been achieving something when we’re all playing together that makes me want to dance,” adds bass player and singer Asher Case, 19. “I think on this record, we tapped into that so much more.”
The three bandmates are crowded around a kitchen countertop at Lowenstein’s house when they log onto Zoom to chat about their debut LP. It’s late afternoon, an hour or two after Lowenstein and Case got out of high school and art school, respectively. (“I was just being a slacker today,” notes Slater, who is not enrolled anywhere.)
They recorded Ripped and Torn in a focused five-day burst over their spring break in 2024, working with producer Randy Randall of the L.A. noise band No Age. “Five days is a long time for us,” Slater says. “The longest we’ve been in a studio.”
Before entering Chicago’s Palisade Studios, they spent a day with Randall “just recording the harshest of the stuff that we had planned out,” Lowenstein says. “And the majority of what we did that day ended up being scrapped.”
They took the rest of that week to knock out some new songs and develop them further, working up vocal harmonies and sharpening arrangements on 16-track tape. “We were like, how can we distill the sound of the band at its purest?” Slater says. “We wanted to take this in a more stylized direction — less of a big rock sound, more vintage, more dubby, more old punk rock.”
To that end, they recorded the album in mono, “and it’s definitely on purpose,” Slater adds. “It wasn’t an exporting failure or anything.”
Lowenstein, Case, and Slater (from left).
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
Pioneering Seventies and Eighties bands like the Buzzcocks and Wipers were one key reference point during the sessions. Early-2000s dance-punk acts like the Rapture, Bloc Party, and Liars were another, though they’re quick to point out that they developed that interest independently of any nostalgia-cycle trends.
“We were already into a lot of that stuff, and then suddenly the internet freaked out about it,” Lowenstein says. “In New York City, everyone is wearing their skinny ties now and whatever. Honestly, the worst of it is the Dare, grasping at something that LCD Soundsystem once achieved.”
“It’s just a little element in there,” Slater adds. “We’re not, like, the new indie sleaze band.”
Around this point in the Zoom, Lowenstein’s mom comes home. “One second, sorry,” the drummer says, looking as mildly embarrassed as anyone his age when a parent shows up.
Starting in 2019, the Lowenstein house was the launching ground for both Lifeguard and Horsegirl, the equally brilliant band in which Isaac’s older sister, Penelope, plays guitar and sings. The siblings had both been making noise for years by then: Their parents started Isaac on drum lessons around age two. “I was banging on pots and pans in the kitchen, and I would barge into the room where my sister was taking guitar lessons and start hitting things,” he says. “They’re like, ‘He needs to do something with his arms.’”
Case also comes from a musical family — his father, Brian, has played in a number of highly regarded art-rock bands including Disappears and FACS. “When I was a kid, like aged zero to five, I was always everywhere that he was, and that probably had some impact on my deep subconscious,” says the bassist.
Slater, meanwhile, came to music much later. “I didn’t start playing music until I was about 14 or 15,” he says. “If I was in a musical household, I feel like I wouldn’t have done it, because I’m such a contrarian, and I really was as a kid. So, thanks for that.”
The three of them met at a teen open mic in the summer of 2019. Case and Lowenstein had been jamming together for a while, with one glaring problem: “We were like, ‘Shit, we want to start a band, but we can’t find anyone cool that plays guitar,’” Lowenstein says. “No one else liked our taste. Everyone was into, like, Zeppelin only.”
They ended up guesting with an early lineup of Horsegirl at the open mic. “I kind of begged my sister to let me play on one song,” Lowenstein says. Slater, who was there to perform with his newly formed band Dwaal Troupe, was blown away: “I’d never seen a drummer like that. It was insane.”
Now complete as a trio, Lifeguard were just discovering the musical spark they made together when Covid shut down live performances the next spring. Slater used the downtime to start a photocopied zine that he distributed via the CTA. “I would take the train and tape it to the inside of the seats, or I’d tape it to the signs,” he says. “And then it would instantly be taken down by the police or whatever. But I wanted this to spread. It was desperate: What are we going to do if we can’t play concerts and meet new people? I was feverish with it, you know?”
“You have to believe in yourself and put it out there,” says Slater (left).
Early issues of the zine, which he called Hallogallo after the Neu! song, featured stories about their friends’ fledgling bands. “The first issue was like, seven bands, less than 10 people,” Slater says.
“Wasn’t there a Dwaal Troupe interview in there, where you interviewed yourself?” Lowenstein asks.
“Basically, yeah,” Slater says. “It was very self-obsessed, which is important. You have to believe in yourself and put it out there.”
When lockdown finally lifted, Hallogallo blossomed into a DIY festival that Slater has organized each year since 2022 to spotlight some of the promising young bands that have sprung up throughout Chicago at the same time as Lifeguard. “The zine was really important in that,” Lowenstein says. “It felt like there was a new generation of kids that discovered all this stuff on the internet while they were trapped in their rooms and suddenly came out the other side with hope and a new longing to make music with other people.”
Even as their career keeps growing, Lifeguard are staying true to the spontaneous, creatively free spirit that defines them. Outside the band, Lowenstein makes electronic music under the name Donkey Basketball; Slater released an album of immaculate guitar-pop gems as Sharp Pins last year. (It was recently reissued by the Pacific Northwest labels K and Perennial.) “That’s where I put my brain directly into a tape machine and see what comes out,” Slater says. “It’s very much a therapeutic solo endeavor.”
On the day that Ripped and Torn arrives in the world next month, Lifeguard will be in Berlin to kick off their summer tour. Case and Lowenstein joke that they might head to the famously exclusive dance club Berghain after the show. In all seriousness, they add, they’re excited to go back to Europe.
“We’ve had really good shows there,” Case says. “Some of the sweatiest shows ever, smallest rooms ever. That’s the type of environment we thrive in.”
