Foto-© Grace Conrad

Am 6. Juni 2025 erschien mit Ripped and Torn das Debütalbum des Chicagoer Trios Lifeguard auf Matador Records. Eine Platte, die klingt, als stünde man in einem zu kleinen Raum vor einer zu lauten Band: rau, direkt, improvisiert, aber nie unüberlegt.

Am Tag ihrer Release-Show in der Berliner Neuen Zukunft sprachen wir mit der Band – oder besser gesagt: wir konnten uns mitten in ein Gespräch zwischen drei langjährigen Freunden einklinken, das genauso natürlich und impulsiv verlief wie ihr Live-Set später am Abend.

Das Konzert war von dieser dichten Dynamik geprägt: Der Raum war voll, die Stimmung heiß, der Sound ungefiltert und laut. Lifeguard spielten, als würde niemand zusehen – fast wie bei einer offenen Probe. Was auf dem Album bereits spürbar ist, war live nur noch deutlicher: Ripped and Torn lebt davon, live gehört und gemeinsam erlebt zu werden. Denn genau in Kellerclubs wie der Neuen Zukunft entfaltet sich der Sound am besten und nicht im sterilen Studio-Perfektionismus.

Im Gespräch erzählen Kai Slater (Gitarre, Gesang), Asher Case (Bass, Bariton-Gitarre, Gesang) und Isaac Lowenstein (Schlagzeug, Synthesizer) von ihren Anfängen in der DIY-Szene Chicagos, dem Vertrauen in spontane Ideen, politischen Texten ohne Predigt – und davon, wie es sich anfühlt, wenn man plötzlich nicht mehr allein mit der eigenen Musik ist.

First, thanks for taking the time to talk with us, and big congrats on your debut album, Ripped and Torn, which just came out today, on June 6th. We’re catching up right before your show in Berlin at Neue Zukunft. Before we jump into the record, let’s rewind a bit. How did the three of you find your way to playing music together? What’s the origin story behind Lifeguard?
Asher: Well, Isaac and I met each other when we were like 11 or 12, and we had been playing together for a few months. That summer, we played a show with Isaac’s sister’s band, Horsegirl, and met Kai because he was also playing that show. Then we started with his other band, Dwell Troop, and started playing together after that.
Kai: Yeah, they were amazing! Isaac was this crazy, acrobatic-like drummer with insane chops and this really machine-gun kind of feel. It was really good; I was very impressed by them. And also Asher’s hair and stuff, haha. Well, then I thought I’d never see them again, but then we were going around this street fest carnival thing, and I saw them at the lemonade stand, and we were like, wow! We were really excited to see each other. We then traded numbers, and this is kind of how it all started.

So you’ve been playing music together since you were teens. How has your collaboration evolved over the past few years, both musically and personally?
Kai: Our collaboration hasn’t changed that much dynamically, but because we’ve recorded and written everything since the beginning, we’ve sort of literally documented how we’ve changed through our music and lyrics. The big dynamic change, I think, is that we all know how to write and structure songs more now, and how to make a song more concise and effective. I feel like this album is a good example of good two- to three-minute songs while being able to be really straight to the point with it.
Asher: Yeah, I think the core of how we make music together really hasn’t changed since we were kids. A lot of it still just happens naturally when we’re in the room together. It’s all rooted in improvisation — all the songs, the little parts, the shifts. It all comes directly from what happens when the three of us are working together on shaping a song’s form and structure. And to me, that hasn’t changed at all, which is a really good thing.

Since you came up in Chicago’s underground scene, in what ways did those early shows and spaces shape your identity as a band?
Kai: I would say that from the start, the way we learned how to write music was by going to see our peers and our friends’ bands. And I think we’ve kept that ethos: the most important inspiration is from the people you know and the bands that you’re friends with. We’ve always kind of kept that at the core of how we’re being influenced.
Isaac: Yeah, honestly, from the start, I feel like improvising with our friends and even making music with people outside of this band has always also been a big part of how all of us get creative output. Even within the first few months of Lifeguard, we would end up in sort of like big jam sessions with the extended friend group. We still kind of try to channel that — by all of us playing in other bands or joining other bands for shows. Everyone sharing musical spaces outside of the band has always really been essential.
Kai: That’s like a big, cool thing in Chicago that we do sometimes. Bands are always, like, bringing on our friends.

So it’s really about being rooted in the scene that shaped you — that kind of deep connection through playing with friends and being part of something local. I like that. But beyond that, who or what would you say have been some of the key influences that helped shape the Lifeguard sound — apart from jamming with friends and being part of that community?
Kai: If we go from the start, then Tortoise and stuff like that. Also the general Ward kind of Chicago rock universe — that was a huge thing at the start. We all liked Brian Eno as well.
Asher: When I’m thinking about this record, ’70s punk and dub-influenced post-punk really feel like they’re at the core of it. That influence has always been there, but now we’ve reached a point where we know our sound well enough to reference those things without it coming off as derivative or like we’re knocking it off. And I think that took some time to figure out.
Kai: Also, I think what inspired us as well is that we were all getting into a lot of the same records around the same time.

With your debut album out today on Matador Records, how does it feel to finally release your first full-length record into the world?
Asher: Well, it’s really funny to hear people talking to me about it and also telling me what songs are their favorite, because it’s been kind of like very beaten into the ground for me — in terms of, like, we made it over a year ago and I’ve been hearing it for so long now. That definitely doesn’t mean that I’m not excited about it, it just feels very strange to me that people are actually hearing it for the first time now. And I don’t know — it feels unreal.
Kai: Yeah, it does feel unreal.
Asher: And also it just happened — like, it just happened today, so it’s not like I even have a lot of experience talking to people about it, where we both heard it.
Isaac: I guess I’m a little bit just reiterating what Asher said, but the record has been sort of this private thing for us, you know? It is something that only I and maybe 15 other people have been able to hear for the longest time. And now, to know that it’s out there and no longer sort of my own special thing — you know, it’s just a crazy feeling.

I mean, it’s such an intimate thing really — something you used to just share with each other, and now it’s out there for everyone. I totally get that. Was there a particular sound, emotion or visual world that guided you while making the record? Or did it all evolve more instinctively as you went along?
Kai: I mean, we definitely had a lot of influence from more of those ’70s live records. Something like Public Image Ltd, The Homosexuals, or like The Ramones. That super tight, punchy drum sound and guitars that feel like buzz saws — and also dub records with absolutely insane drum production — all of that fed into what we wanted this record to sound like. We really aimed to stylize the album and keep it — apart from the live sound — less documentarian and more like its own kind of stylistic thing. A big part of that was capturing the band at its most immediate moment. A lot of what you hear are improvised recordings, later stitched together with more structured songs. The writing process this time was way faster than anything we’ve done before — it was about staying in that moment. Because if you sit on a song too long before recording it, you can start to second-guess it. And if you don’t like the song anymore, why record it at all?
Asher: The visual side of things has always been a bit tricky for us, because we don’t really make music with a specific image or visual in mind. So when it comes time to create the artwork, we usually look back at our musical influences for inspiration. And then, whatever we do visually almost always comes from the three of us as well. We are working together on designing the cover. With this record, we were trying to go more towards the side of analog printing. We made the artwork using a risograph printer, focusing on patterns and bold colors used across large areas — more about building a composition than using a photo or going for something high-definition. I mean, there are still photos used on the cover, but they’re very taken down to the most minimal, almost abstract form.

So would you say the visuals really grow out of your sound? That they really reflect what you’re singing about and the overall energy of the music?
Kai: Yeah. It’s also like we make all of the art almost religiously.
Isaac: Sometimes I feel like it would probably be a better use of our time, or we would be less stressed out, if we didn’t resort to trying to do everything ourselves. But who cares?
Kai: Yeah, who cares?
Isaac: And you know, it’s made the label sometimes a little mad, haha. Like, no, we’re gonna do it! We have to do it.

Haha, I can imagine that. I want to come back to something you mentioned earlier about this record feeling very immediate. To me, the title Ripped and Torn also carries this raw, in-the-moment kind of energy. What does that title mean to you, and how does it tie into the mood and themes of the record?
Kai: Well, it’s an old punk fanzine that I really love, and it influences what we do. But I think as we were working on the record — assembling it, sequencing it — we realized that it kind of sounds like you made a record and then accidentally dubbed it onto some weird noise tape or something. Because of all the little interstitial pieces on the album, it feels like there’s this focused record underneath, but it’s been laid over something more chaotic and strange. We liked that shambly, collage-y aspect.
Asher: That’s also kind of how we write our songs. And I think, in general, post-punk — not as a genre we’re chasing, but as an energy — has a lot to do with ripping things up, recombining them, and throwing ideas together.
Kai: Ripping it up and starting again.
Asher: Yeah, exactly. And for me, the title just fits the music, because it reflects all of that, while also describing what the record sounds like.
Kai: I also think those aspects of post-punk — the messy, ramshackle qualities — aren’t used that much nowadays. We were going back more to the early records, where the genre still felt new and the music was kind of more screwed up. I mean, even a band like The Buzzcocks was pretty loose — not tight, kind of.
Isaac: Yeah, and all those idiosyncrasies have sort of been lost over time. People are getting more interested — or musically becoming more inclined — to tighten everything up, to make it more perfect. People are quantizing drums to the grid, everything lined up just right. I mean, that’s not necessarily a bad thing in new post-punk, but I think that we were after something more immediate. That sort of if it’s crap, then it’s crap quality, you know. That’s also what’s fun about it. You’re kind of stuck with it, instead of using a computer to fix every little thing.
Kai: Yeah, because we recorded the album on tape, so we couldn’t really go back and fix much anyway.
Isaac: Exactly. Once it was on tape, it was committed. Sometimes we would have vocal takes that would just be completely clipping into the soundboard, and there was just no way to fix them.
Kai: Yeah. We’d sometimes record like three songs, and then the engineer would go, “Oh, I actually forgot to hit record,” because he was used to working digitally — but we were working on tape. So we’d have to do it again, you know.
Isaac: It also meant we had to be a good band. I think it helped us really dial in and be prepared for that kind of process.

So, since you recorded this album in Chicago with Randy Randall from No Age — how did that collaboration come about, and what did he bring into the sessions?
Asher: We met him when we played a show with No Age a couple of years ago. We were chatting after the gig, and he kind of casually mentioned that he’d love to make a record sometime. Then, two years later, we reached out – and that’s what ended up happening. I liked working with Randy because he’s full of ideas but also very open to your ideas and trying everything. That was really helpful for this album, especially considering how quickly we were committing ideas to tape. We were in this studio with a bunch of pretty nice equipment that we usually don’t have. So a lot of the sounds that make the record really what it is were just off the cuff. Like, “Oh, there’s a tape echo here – let’s run the entire drum track through it and see how it sounds.” Then we’d just print it right away. Or like, there was this… what was it called?
Isaac: A Crumar.
Asher: Right. A Crumar is like an Italian synthesizer that we used for a bunch of our songs and that was just sitting there. We were all interested in trying it. That kind of spontaneity – Randy really encouraged it.

Let’s jump into your first single, It Will Get Worse. It has a sharp but disorienting, almost dissociative energy. The line “It will get worse till you can’t stand it at all” really stuck with me. What’s the story or feeling behind that track specifically?
Kai: I mean, it reflects a lot of the larger themes of the record – themes of decline, or the feeling of spiraling – which are things that are very hard not to think about in America right now. But writing about that in a way that feels unique or impactful is very hard.
Asher: Without it being just depressing.
Kai: Yeah. If you’re getting into a political realm of lyrics, the most direct and obvious statements are the most impactful ones – because no one wants to be preached to, and we certainly don’t want to do that. What’s most important is where your beliefs actually lie, what types of shows you’re playing, and if you’re supporting good
causes, you know. So it’s like we’re trying not to be preachy. As for that song – I mean, I think I wrote all
the lyrics for that one, so that’s where I was coming from.

When it comes to lyrics in general – do the words usually follow the music, or has lyric writing become a way of processing things outside of the band context?
Kai: A bit of both. I think you can kind of get into holes as a lyricist if you’re just writing all your lyrics after the music. A lot of the time, I start with the vocal ideas because that helps break out of those boxes that you might find yourself in if you write them always last. We also all pull a lot from our own journaling and thoughts that we have when we’re just experiencing life and documenting our thoughts.
Asher: Yeah, for me, if I’m journaling and something reads more like a short phrase, then I can kind of tell it’s meant to be a lyric. If it reads more like a diary entry, it’s not going to have the same effect.
Kai: I feel like a lot of the lines on this record are built from short stanzas. We kind of base that for everything else. I can think of a few songs that were written that way, lyrically.
Asher: Yeah, it’s easier to put shorter stanzas into songs after they’ve already been written. I think for me, writing lyrics for this band often comes after the music – but that’s also subject to change.

So you all contribute to writing, I guess? Or do you have specific roles or a structure when it comes to lyrics, and generally speaking?
Isaac: We all contribute, yeah. As of now, we don’t have a rule set or a strict system. Usually, we just hop into writing a song and try to capture the ideas in a voice memo or whatever. Most of our songs come together in some shape within the first 20 minutes of jamming. But we have talked about experimenting more in the future – like sending ideas to each other and combining them. But for the time being, it has mostly just been very immediate – sort of no rules, let’s just see how this works.
Kai: The only time that we really contribute individually is if we had one idea that was sitting around in our heads for like two years or whatever. Like the chorus for the title track – I had that on an old tape machine from a scrapped song, but it fit perfectly here. That happens with all of us sometimes. And in terms of lyrics: for me and Asher, generally, if we’re singing it, we wrote it. Except for the song France And, I think.

So how would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard you before – not in terms of genre, but more in terms of feeling or energy?
Kai: Celebratory angst for happy dancing time with friends and colleagues, maybe?
Isaac: Buzzsaw. Wait, celebratory?
Kai: Did I say celebratory? Maybe not celebratory, haha. But definitely intense.

Since you’re playing a release show in Berlin and then in Kusel the next day – what can people expect from a Lifeguard set?
Kai: Loud.
Isaac: Loud.
Asher: We will be loud. Lately, I’ve been doing two amplifiers stacked on top of each other, which is exciting. They can expect new hardware. There’s new electronics, even new drum implements.
Isaac: If it’s your first time seeing us – expect it to be loud, intense, and heartfelt.
Asher: And please dance to it.
Isaac: It’s true. Do not stop anyone from dancing is another expectation you should have of yourself.
Kai: If you see someone dancing, you should be dancing. What are you doing if not?

Lastly, this is only the beginning. What are you most excited about in the months ahead?
Kai: Hopefully meeting more younger people – connecting with our target audience.
Asher: Yeah, we’re touring with some really good bands from the United States: Famous Marables, Parking, Autobahn, TV Buddha… all really solid groups.
Isaac: Good bands, good people.
Asher: Yeah – strong groups, well-tempered guys, haha.