Lifeguard w/ PARKiNG

Lifeguard (Chicago / Matador Records)

https://lifeguardband100.bandcamp.com/album/ministry-energie

Ripped and Torn, the debut album by Chicago three-piece Lifeguard, may or may not take its title from the legendary Scottish punk fanzine of the same name. Or perhaps it references the torn t-shirts that rock writer Lester Bangs claimed the late Pere Ubu founder Peter Laughner died for “in the battle fires of his ripped emotions.” Or maybe it points to the trio’s ferociously destabilising take on melodic post-punk and high velocity hardcore, signposting their debt to the kind of year zero aesthetics that would reignite wild improvisational songforms with muzzy garage Messthetics in a way rarely extrapolated this side of Dredd Foole & The Din.

Either way, Lifeguard stake their music on the kind of absolute sincerity of the first wave of garage bands, garage bands that took rock at its word, while simultaneously cutting it up with parallel traditions of freak. The half-chanted, half-sung vocals are hypnotic. Songs aren’t so much explicated as they are exorcised, as though the melodies are plucked straight from the air through the repeat-semaphoring of Asher Case on bass, the machine gun percussion that Isaac Lowenstien plays almost like a lead instrument, and that flame-thrower guitar that Kai Slater sprays all over the ever-circling rhythm section. Indeed, the trio play around an implied centre of gravity with all of the brain-razzing appeal of classic minimalism, taking three-minute hooks into the zone of eternal music by jamming in – and out – of time. And then there are the more experimental pieces – “Music for Three Drums” (which surely references Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians), “Charlie’s Vox” – that reveal the breadth of Lifeguard’s vision, incorporating a kind of collaged DIY music that fully embraces the bastardised avant garde of margin walkers like The Dead C, Chrome, and Swell Maps.

PARKiNG

https://linktr.ee/parkingbandus

Push the drum kit to the front! Formed in Louisville, KY in late 2023, art-rock band PARKiNG delivers a solemn yet incredibly energetic approach at performing what can only be labeled as dance music. The group consists of bassist and vocalist Lizzie Cooper, guitarist Boss Benson, and multi-instrumentalist T. Moore. The trio have independently released several compilations, EPs, and other oddities on cassette tapes through the mock Louisville tape label “Screaming Ears Records” since their creation in the fall of 2023.

7pm – doors
730pm – show
$13 adv / $15 dos
All Ages

Adv tix here –

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lifeguard-tickets-1313043772269

*TIX ON SALE NOW*