Digital music libraries started digging the maxi single’s grave and streaming tossed the final shovelful of dirt, rendering the format obsolete, or at least categorically indistinguishable from an EP. It would be easy to write off Chicago punks Lifeguard as nostalgia fetishists and just as easy to forgive them for it—and not just because in the streaming age, the maxi single’s current iteration exists as a method of juicing a focus track’s chart performance by bulk-releasing half-assed remixes, but also because, in Lifeguard’s case, the songs are doing more than just imitating their influences. And more importantly, because they actually rip.
Much like guitarist and co-vocalist Kai Slater’s more twee-leaning band Sharp Pins and his self-published HALLOGALLO zine, Lifeguard’s music favors analog aesthetics that are more than just delay-pedal-deep. Their full-length Matador-debut, Ripped and Torn, embedded illustrious power-pop melodies into dense, shreddy punk songs that delivered on the title’s tactile promises. Ultra Violence / Appetite comes as its psuedo-B-side. It’s held together by two title tracks that further showcase the structural integrity of Slater, Isaac Lowenstein, and Asher Case’s sensibilities on Ripped and Torn while taking their sonics in a scratchier, more primitive direction reminiscent of their early jam-centric EPs.
“Ultra Violence” sounds like it could’ve come straight from 2022’s Crowd Can Talk. Its lead riff arrives sliced out in thick slabs atop a Margin Walker-manic bassline. The bluntness of the track’s minimalistic talk-sung vocals is shadowed by a lighter response to the titular call. From there, Lifeguard use their spare seven minutes to spiral out into experiments in instrumental micro-songwriting. Ultra Violence / Appetite was recorded via 8-track, with the crunch of cassette audio in mind. It’s the trio at their most instinctive and volatile.
Ultra Violence / Appetite is hard proof that there is beauty in the outtakes, that everything is a placeholder until it’s not. The rough drafts crackle with impulse, like on the “Manhunt” trilogy. Though the three tracks add up to less than one minute, they still manage to build a minuscule but menacing film noir leitmotif from atonal keys and sizzles of tape hissing. The first version of “Blatant” creaks and groans with the discordance and metallic echo of their Chicago no-wave predecessors—a shrill, Weasel Walter-esque guitar screeches off the path laid out by Lowenstein’s steadfast snare drumming—while its second dub throws in some incomprehensible monotone vocal warbling while cranking up the delay on an Echoplex pedal, making for an even more spacey, blown-out sound. Closer “Steal Everything” hollows itself out for 38 seconds of brassy, cacophonous krautrock.
Amidst all of this, “Appetite” is Lifeguard’s reminder not to let their discordant micro-jams fool you—they still know how to write a pop song, and a damn good one. Catchy and libinous, its hook burns like the ones wired through a Suicide sleeper hit, or the most teeny-bopper brightness in The Undertones’ or Ramones’ discographies—all crushed into a claustrophobic, fuzz-muffled corner. Though more fully-formed than the odds and ends surrounding it, “Appetite” is strung together with static. “Oh, I’ve been waiting at the seams / To tear them out, to afford my dreams / Darkroom picture of a queenly thing / Staring back at me,” Case sings at the feverish chorus, a shaky-handed and full-hearted embodiment of the force driving Lifeguard’s latest release—to tear into itself without hesitation and see what’s left once everything’s in tatters. [Matador]
Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound and her “mostly about music” newsletter, Our Band Could Be Your Wife.
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