Lifeguard: “We wanted to make a punk record that sounds like you accidentally dubbed it onto a tape of noise music”

Published July, 2025
by Easterndaze

It’s one of the most educational books I’ve ever read about music (and I’ve read an awful lot of music books): “Rip It Up and Start Again”, music journalist Simon Reynolds’ comprehensive post-punk bible. The great indie group Lifeguard sound as if they have studied this book intensively. The extremely young trio from Chicago – they come from the same band scene as Horsegirl – are musically close to the original post-punk sound of the genre founders; especially compared to the British bands that have been waving the post-punk flag recently, Lifeguard are the real deal. They get it right, their music crawls, crashes and grooves. Quiet noise guitars! Wubby dub basses! Idiosyncratic punk drums! Nervous Jaul vocals! Just as it should be… Wonderful dissonance transforms into sugar-sweet pop melodies on Lifeguard, that’s easy to say, but here it’s really true.

Kaput author Lennart Brauwers spoke to frontman Kai Slater about the band’s fantastic Matador debut album, his solo project Sharp Pins and the immense importance of local music scenes.

Congratulations on your new album “Ripped and Torn”. It really fills the gap for a certain type of post-punk music that I’ve been missing in these last few years. To stay on that topic: How do you feel about the post-punk label that’s been put on Lifeguard?

Kai Slater: Well, we don’t like most modern music that’s called post-punk; we’re definitely more into post-punk from the seventies and eighties. I mean, it’s a very controversial term in a lot of ways, because some of it was technically before the beginning of punk in 1976. So, was that proto-punk or post-punk? It gets really confusing… Bands like Public Image Ltd., The Homosexuals, Buzzcocks or This Heat are so different to me – you could call them a billion different things. But in terms of an overarching label, post-punk seems to be the the most common for acts like that, who were destroying how corporate the original punk movement became very soon after its creation. You can’t pick your label as much as you try to, so we’re fine with that.

A lot of those bands from the seventies and eightes were influenced by dub and reggae music. I can hear that on your new album too. Was that always part of your musical identity or did that come later?

It did come later. I mean, we were influenced by British bands from the late seventies that were influenced by that – like The Specials – who started getting back into the Jamaican import records. I’ve always been interested in the mod subculture and the trends of that, so I started getting more into the original ska and rocksteady records. And our drummer Isaac was always into King Tubby, so it’s always been part of our identity. We just really honed in on the classic dub records and were listening to Lee “Scratchy” Perry and stuff like that. That made it even more clear what Public Image Ltd., The Clash or even The Police were doing in the seventies; it was their whole thing! It’s not really a sound you hear much nowadays, so it’s cool you picked up on that…

To stay on the topic of influences for a second: Were there other things that you hadn’t delved into before that you delved into for this record?

We did a lot of tape looping and harsh improvisation. That was a big thing: splicing stuff together. We wanted to make a punk record that sounds like you accidentally dubbed it onto a tape of noise music. So once a song ends, sometimes this other side of the band comes through. That was a conscious choice, to make it feel jerky when you’re listening to the album as a whole.

Another thing that really jumps out when you’re listening to the album is that it’s very punchy and tough sounding, but it’s also very melodic and poppy…

I mean, when you’re talking about a band like the Buzzcocks, that’s a huge influence for us – especially melodically… I also make solo music under the name Sharp Pins, and that has more of a classic sixties sound; it’s more inspired by The Kinks or The Beatles. So I’m definitely the person who brings the most melody to Lifeguard. But I think we all came together for this album and really started to think more about our song forms, making every track a digestible song. Not in the way that it needs to be radio friendly, but there is such more power in a two minute song. I like leaving one verse in a song, so you have to listen to it again and again. So yeah, the the pop song is very important to us.

You already mentioned your solo project, Sharp Pins. Could you talk a little bit about the differences between the songwriting process for Lifeguard and for Sharp Pins?

It’s mostly about different mindsets. When I’m doing Sharp Pins, I’m tapping into something else. Both bands have a stylistic core, and it’s very important to me how how the band represents itself. Sharp Pins taps into all the influences that I really started with as a kid, all the British Invasion, early psychedelia and mod stuff. I started that project with the question: What if there was this lost band from the sixties called Sharp Pins and it got reissued and you found it in the back of a record store. Robert Pollard from Guided By Voices said that he had this dream where he walked into a record store and there were all these amazing, colorful records – but none of them were real. And then he woke up and was like: Well, now I have to make all of those records. For Sharp Pins, that’s also my thinking. The writing process is very different from that of Lifeguard because I just start with the vocal melody while I’m walking somewhere or driving. The majority of those songs were just written by me humming a melody. That’s very different from Lifeguard, which is more of a conjoined thing. When we start songs on our own and bring them to the band, they’re not fully formed because we really respect what every person can bring to the table for each song.

A lot of stuff has been written about the new indie rock scene in Chicago. Would you say that being part of that scene helped you?

It started very small. Then I started making this zine called “Hallogallo”, which helped to reach out to other people; it put us on the map, kind of. So this community started happening, and it’s been something that changes every month. New people move here, other people move away. Chicago is a big city, you know – you really have to keep your eye on the radar and then go and see bands all the time. That’s how a scene like that thrives, it’s about people actually being interested and going to shows. That was the key of it all. If we really like a band, we always say: Let’s meet them, let’s do a show together. You could say that it has grown really organically, but that would be a lie. Because it’s something you have to put a lot of effort into. But as you do it, more people see the effort you’re putting into it and everyone starts helping.

Apart from having a zine, what’s your relationship to music journalism nowadays?

I don’t really consume it, because I’m so busy reading zines and meeting zine people. I don’t disregard it or disrespect it though, it has its place. But I prefers a zine, because it exists outside of traditional journalism most of the time, and it’s usually just made by musicians or artists. I like that it can be very unfiltered and that you’re not going through editors or whatever; it’s free for all and you can say whatever you want.

What’s your favorite song on “Ripped and Torn“?

Probably the title track. That one was a departure for the band – it’s a more melancholic, melodic song. Actually, it came out of a Sharp Pins Song that I had scrapped. In the chorus – when I say “You’er teacher’s pet/Reading your Ripped and Torn” – I’m talking about the old punk zine called Ripped and Torn. Also, I think it’s a cool emotional climax, because it slows down and allows the melody to take its time.

Thank you for your time. 

Text by Lennart Brauwers 
Photo Conrad Grace

Originally published by Kaput Magazine. This article is brought to you as part of the EM GUIDE project – an initiative dedicated to empowering independent music magazines and strengthen the underground music scene in Europe. Read more about the project at emgui.de.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.