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\u201cThe best teenage band since Squirrel Bait.\u201d Making that your Bandcamp bio is one option to seize the eye of discerning underground rock followers with an ear towards historical past. The Chicago trio Lifeguard clearly know their means across the classics, a minimum of in case your definition of \u201cclassic\u201d contains the frantic, noise-wrecked punk offshoots of the \u201980s \u2014 like, certain, Squirrel Bait, the Kentucky melodic hardcore band whose hearty and rhythmically complicated information helped lay the muse for complete genres. Watching Lifeguard onstage at Chess Club for an official SXSW showcase Friday, I seen greater than a little bit Mission Of Burma of their sound too, so long as we\u2019re discussing the forefathers of scraping, dissonant art-punk.<\/p>\n
Last month Lifeguard introduced their signing to the venerable Matador Records, which lately helped to make stars of one other band from the identical younger Chicago scene, Horsegirl<\/a>. In a way, Matador was already household; Lifeguard drummer Isaac Lowenstein\u2019s sister Penelope is in Horsegirl, and Lifeguard bassist Asher Case\u2019s dad Brian \u2014 at present of FACS \u2014 performed within the former Matador band Ponys amongst different noteworthy teams like 90 Day Men and Disappears. But listening to Lifeguard at Chess Club, I obtained that the sense that even with out the prior affiliations, they’d have appealed to Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy, who snuck into Burma exhibits as a teen and later signed Squirrel Bait to Homestead Records.<\/p>\n With Austin resident Cosloy entrance and heart, snapping the images within the above tweet, Lifeguard blitzed our senses Friday. The songs coursed with the anxious power of youth, however not the clumsiness. It was half an hour of tense, fast-paced post-punk with sharp edges and (generally) flatted fifths, delivered with a confidence and authority that both belies Lifeguard\u2019s age or underlines it (I can\u2019t resolve). Both Case\u2019s bass and Kai Slater\u2019s guitar buzzed by way of aggressive, discordant riffs at occasions and careened into squalls of suggestions in any other case, often spreading out into prolonged drones. The vocals, largely from Slater, had been hollered and yelped with a blunt forcefulness that jogs my memory of Hot Snakes frontman Rick Froberg\u2019s weathered bark, however with a not-quite-grown-up slightness. The songs had been tight and knotty, toying round with stress and texture at breakneck speeds, like a FACS LP performed at 45 rpm.<\/p>\n Lifeguard haven\u2019t truly launched something on Matador but, and earlier than placing out a full-length, the label plans to reissue final 12 months\u2019s Crowd Can Talk<\/em> EP; commenters on Bandcamp evaluate that one to every little thing from Descendents to Erase Errata, to provide you an additional sense of this band\u2019s vary. Crowd Can Talk<\/em> and Friday\u2019s present have me keen to listen to a brand new file, each time it comes. This band was in some methods raised by one technology of indie rock and fairly actually got here of age inside one other, a scene<\/a> that’s solely starting to spill out into the world past Chicago all-ages exhibits. (See additionally: Friko<\/a>, current signees to Fire Talk Records, who had been taking part in proper subsequent door at Swan Dive throughout Lifeguard\u2019s set.) Before hitting their 20s, Lifeguard already really feel extra seasoned and self-possessed than numerous buzz bands in Austin this 12 months. If they do comply with within the footsteps of Squirrel Bait, we will stay up for a gamut of creative sounds from these three down the street \u2014 to not get too far out forward of the fiery, impressed music they\u2019re making now.<\/p>\n