Lifeguard: Ripped and Torn evaluation – this good post-punk racket feels like a commute to a rivet manufacturing facility

After rising from the Chicago DIY scene 5 years in the past, Lifeguard’s long-awaited debut crashes in with loud guitars and drums like a remark of intent. Opening monitor A Tightwire units the template for the album: pressing, off-kilter or even reasonably disorienting. The younger trio of Kai Slater (guitar, vocals), Asher Case (bass, baritone guitar, vocals) and Isaac Lowenstein (drums, synth) have performed in combination since highschool, which has supposed they have got a musical figuring out and are as tight because the proverbial nut.

Theirs is angular, riding post-punk with audible echoes of the Pop Group, Wire, Gang of Four and the Wedding Present, however they’ve unquestionably introduced their very own spin to it. The songs blaze forth with hurtling, most commonly indecipherable imagery. They may well be yelling “I am the spy on your pillow” or “words like tonality come to me”. What does all of it imply? Who is aware of – but it surely’s a laugh considering it via.

There’s an actual sense of drama to the circular-saw guitars, sluggish builds and cascading basslines, from which spring bubbling tunes and fascinating curveballs. Like You’ll Lose is post-punk with a hymnal high quality. The weirdly compulsive Music for 3 Drums knowingly references Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, however sounds as though it was once recorded all through a discuss with to a rivet-making manufacturing facility. Some in their maximum distorted guitars, drones and screeching steel may end up too difficult for plenty of palates, but it surely’s refreshing to listen to a tender band make the sort of daring racket.