“If you were to look at his amp settings onstage, you’d be like, ‘Why is he doing that!? Turn that down”: Lifeguard on adventures in improvised sound, creative epiphanies, and how they found the balance between abstract noise and pop hooks

Lifeguard's Kai Slater, Isaac Lowenstein and Asher Case.

Ripped And Torn, the debut album from Chicago trio Lifeguard, is the exhilarating sound of youth in revolt and in service to a very precise intention to take what might have been long-form improvisational noise – and all the electric guitar klang and skronk that goes with that – and turn it into a concise work of stylistically radical rock.

“We liked this idea that you had this rock record that you accidentally dubbed onto like a noise tape or something,” says vocalist/guitarist Kai Slater. “And so it feels like sometimes you get these snippets of something completely different. But I think it’s very true to the band as this improvisational unit.”