Lifeguard Kick Off Your Summer of Noise With ‘Ripped and Torn'
Yet that just hinted at the power of Ripped and Torn. Lifeguard have their own wonderfully brash power-clang guitar attack, jumping right in with the frantic 'A Tightwire' and keeping the buzz going for 12 jagged songs in barely over a half-hour, without a pause for breath. They sound willing to try anything, except being boring.
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Lifeguard come from the hopping teenage Chicago underground rock scene, the Hallogallo collective, with kindred spirits like Horsegirl, Friko, Answering Machines and many more. It's named after the art/music zine published by singer-guitarist Kai Slater, which he started up during the pandemic to keep the DIY scene in touch with each other. (In turn, the zine's named after a Neu! song.) In addition to Lifeguard, Slater has a completely different other top-shelf band, Sharp Pins, who just released an superb album Radio DDR, going for a mod lo-fi jangle-pop sound that bristles with intelligence.
If these bands have anything in common, it's their hyper-active youthful energy, cocky confidence, cool record collections, and a refusal to follow cliches. There's a family connection as well: Lifeguard drummer Isaac Lowenstein's older sister Phoebe plays in Horsegirl, who just released their own bang-up album Phonetics On and On. (The two bands collaborated last year for a giddy cover of the Stone Roses' 'I Wanna Be Adored.') These kids don't waste time, and neither does this album.
Ripped and Torn was produced by Randy Randall, from the excellent L.A. noise-punk band No Age. Slater, Lowenstein, and bassist Asher Case jump right in, with fiery rockers like 'It Will Get Worse.' Their sound is definitely in the Matador tradition — it makes sense for Lifeguard to drop this stellar debut thirty years after the peerless Matador spring of '95. That might be the hottest streak any rock label has ever had, cranking out stone-cold classics by Guided By Voices (Alien Lanes), Pavement (Wowee Zowee), Helium (The Dirt of Luck), Yo La Tengo (Electr-O-Pura), and Chavez (Gone Glimmering), all within a few weeks. But this album would fit right in, and that's high praise indeed.
'Under Your Reach' begins with 20 seconds of white-noise synth buzz before the rhythm section kicks in with a martial beat, leading to a harmony-drenched chorus. 'Like You'll Lose' is steeped in Eighties U.K. postpunk, with the dub-wise throb of the Raincoats, Gang of Four, or the Pop Group. Fugazi might be the loudest element in their sound, especially the quiet-to-massive bass breakdowns in songs like 'A Tightwire.' But you can also hear the Pacific Northwest roar of Unwound, with the stick-to-the-ribs crunch of their Midwest forebears like Arcwelder. There's also a surprising amount of early-2000s NYC dance-punk, especially the Rapture.
Yet Lifeguard turn it all into their own style of craftily melodic body-slam punk hooks, including a kinda-sorta theme song in '(I Wanna) Break Out.' Their Chicago roots run deep. The band released a 2023 video from a live session at Electrical Audio recorded by the late Steve Albini — a torch-passing of sorts, since they're steeped in the kind of uncompromising rock Albini spent his life making and recording. (Strange but true: Case and Lowenstein first met as tweens when one noticed the other was wearing a Tortoise shirt. Insert your own Millions Now Living Will Never Die joke.)
Ripped and Torn hits hardest at the end, in the enigmatic chime of 'T.L.A.,' a song of yearning where Slater sings, 'Words like 'tonality' come to me.' The abrasive guitar harmonics might evoke legends like Polvo or Mission of Burma, but as always, Lifeguard give each sound its own fresh twist. They pace the whole album like experts, hopping from idea to idea within the same song, never letting the pace drag. Spending the summer with Ripped and Torn is gonna be fun.
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Travel + Leisure
3 days ago
- Travel + Leisure
Brazilians Have a Wholesome Reason for Applauding On Beaches—and It's Spreading Across South America
Every day at the beach is deserving of a round of applause. However, if you happen to hear people start to clap while you're soaking up the sun on the beaches of Brazil, know that it actually means something rather specific. "Something incredibly Brazilian is happening at this exact moment," Nick Whincup, aka NicNoBrazil, shared in an Instagram Reel. "If you can hear, people are clapping at the beach, out of nowhere, for no reason. This confused the hell out of me when I first came here." But as Whincup explained, it's a "super Brazilian" thing that people do to help when a child gets separated from their parents. "The clapping indicates, as far as I'm aware, where the child is," he explained. "For example, if the child is here, people in this area will clap. Then the parent can think, wait a minute, my child's gone missing, where are they? Oh, I can hear the clapping, let's go to the clapping." It was a topic of conversation that also took over Reddit this spring, with several people saying this is a common practice in their home country, too. "In Uruguay, it's common practice too. Working as a lifeguard, I would ask the people at the beach to do this when we found a child. Works 90% of the time." Another commenter added, "I live in Argentina, and we do this too when a child goes missing at the beach! I wonder if this is a common practice in all of South America?" And one more confirmed it is indeed common, noting, "In Chile we do it as well." People also took to the comments of Whincup's video to voice their support. "Literally saw it work the other day at A Praia do Arpoador," one person added. But it turns out, the Brazilians use it off the beaches as well. "I'm Brazilian, I live abroad, and I went back to Carnival. A kid got lost in the small block, everyone got down and started clapping their hands," a commenter explained, with several others citing similar examples. "I've never seen this before, and was so emotional when I saw it happen. I thought it was beautiful." Whincup ended his video by noting, "It's such a small thing, I've never seen this on any beach anywhere on the planet. It's just another one of those little Brazilian things that is super, super cool." And maybe it's a tactic that we can all learn from and use around the globe, too.
USA Today
4 days ago
- USA Today
Ethan Slater debuts his 'Wicked' Lego figure, teases 'epic' sequel at Comic-Con
SAN DIEGO – "Wicked" star Ethan Slater didn't need Lego sets filled with witches, princes, woodsmen and yellow brick roads. When he was a kid, it was all about the unmarked trunk overflowing with bricks of all colors. But as an adult getting to play with his own Lego minifigure, Slater is pretty wowed. The 33-year-old Tony-nominated actor, who played Boq Woodsman in the Oscar-nominated first "Wicked," was on hand at the pop-culture festival Comic-Con, held at the San Diego Convention Center, to debut a bunch of new Lego sets inspired by the upcoming sequel "Wicked: For Good" (in theaters Nov. 21). Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox Taking a peek at all the sets for the first time, Slater unsurprisingly spends the most time with the set featuring Boq and his Munchkinland home alongside toy versions of Elphaba (played in the movie by Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande). He notes that Boq's gray wardrobe is new for fans in the next movie, and points out the "Beware of the Wicked Witch" sign, part of the Wizard of Oz's propaganda against Elphaba on the side of the Lego building. "Elphaba's one of Boq's only friends, and on the side of his house is the smear campaign against her. Terrible," Slater says. As for the new movie coming soon, Slater teases an "epic conclusion" where "it's everything coming to a head." All the characters, from Elphaba and Glinda to Boq and Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), "have made these huge decisions at the very end of the first movie. How do they live with or transcend the consequences of those decisions?" Slater says. "So what we're going to see is all of these characters a little bit older. We already know them so well that to see how they grow in the second movie (creates) an even deeper connection to them." He gets a kick out of the "Wicked" wall art set, which features figures of Dorothy and her crew from "The Wizard of Oz," including Toto. "The first role ever was when I was 4 years old, I played Toto to my sister's Dorothy," Slater says. "I'm going to pretend that Toto is also a mini fig of me. It's the cutest I've ever looked." He also has fun playing with a set including Glinda using a magnifying glass. "What is she looking for with this? What is she looking for here? Does it really work? This is so Detective Glinda. That's actually a spinoff coming soon," Slater quips. Back in the day, Slater avoided big themed Lego sets in favor of diving into his "huge bucket" of Legos and "taking the world that was in my head and trying to build a version of it," he says. Yet these new "Wicked" Legos do justice to the work of him and his co-stars. "The special thing about making 'Wicked' was being in this world and it was so intricately designed," Slater says. "The work in all of these Lego sets that make it just as intricate and lets you experience it and be creative with it, it's just a really beautiful thing. It feels really true to what we did."
Elle
7 days ago
- Elle
An Exclusive Sneak Peek at the First Episodes of ‘Outlander: Blood of My Blood'
In a meadow splayed like a blanket between the peaks of the Scottish Highlands, Jamie Roy and Harriet Slater appear to be alone. The actors' voices are barely audible from within the crumbling cemetery where they've reunited—though the boom mics looming above their heads will solve that problem later. On the horizon, a torrent of machine-generated fog dissolves into the grass, dotted with clover and yellow violets that the surrounding crew members crush underfoot as they huddle beneath a cluster of tents. Together, they help take Scotland back in time: to 1714, the setting of the Starz Outlander prequel series Blood of My Blood , set to premiere on August 8. It's late June 2024 when I step onto this set with a group of other journalists, but the air is crisp enough to warrant a cardigan. Both Roy and Slater are well-outfitted for the climate: In the signature garb of Clans Fraser and MacKenzie, respectively, they look as traditionally Scottish as the hilltops surrounding them. As Roy later tells me, he teared up the first time he put on the costume of Brian Fraser (father of Outlander 's Jamie), one of the series' four lead protagonists. 'It was actually really emotional, seeing those Fraser colors on the tartan, wearing those for the first time,' he says. 'I was like, 'Wow. This is really happening.'' The scene I'm watching is one of several in which Roy and Slater's characters must meet in secret, as the romance between their characters—Brian Fraser and Ellen MacKenzie—is strictly forbidden. (As Slater puts it, they've 'kind of got a Romeo and Juliet vibe' going on.) Eventually, they'll overcome their clans' rivalry to become parents to Jamie, as played by Sam Heughan in the now-iconic flagship series. But, for now, they're still young, in love, and in danger. Sanne Gault Jamie Roy as Brian Fraser and Harriet Slater as Ellen MacKenzie. Hundreds of years later and hundreds of miles away—though, in reality, the two sets are within driving distance of each other—Hermione Corfield sits in a cramped attic flat. As the 20th-century Londoner Julia Moriston, she must navigate a romantic dilemma of her own. She's in love with a soldier on the frontlines of World War I, and she's never once seen his face. But, as Outlander fans will already know, the passionate letters she sends to Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) don't go unrequited. Eventually, Julia and Henry, too, will come together, later becoming the parents of Caitriona Balfe's Claire Beauchamp, Outlander 's beloved Sassenach. As these exclusive first-look images from the first two episodes of Outlander: Blood of my Blood reveal, the earliest meetings between the show's lead couples—Brian and Ellen, and Julia and Henry—are pivotal moments. And they're as loaded with magic as the time travel that soon intertwines their stories. While Julia begins the series yearning for her soldier, we're first introduced to Ellen as a grieving daughter. Her father, Red Jacob MacKenzie (Peter Mullan), once promised his eldest child she'd never have to marry. But Jacob's sudden death makes Ellen a political pawn in the hands of her younger brothers, Colum (Séamus McLean Ross) and Dougal (Sam Retford), who each seek the now-vacant MacKenzie lairdship. Ellen has no interest in the marriage matches they lay out for her. Unbeknownst to them, she's already found her soulmate. Brian and Ellen initially collide by accident, but their first planned rendezvous takes place on a bridge revealed in the Blood of My Blood trailer—in a meadow not unlike the one I visited last summer. They begin the scene on opposite ends of the stone structure, uncertain how to proceed, given the scandalous nature of their meeting. (Without a chaperone, Ellen is endangering her reputation as a maiden.) But 'there is this magnetic connection between the two of them,' Roy says, and neither can resist creeping slowly toward each other until, at last, their hands touch. They're meant to be sworn enemies, but the fairies seem to have other plans. Sanne Gault Jamie Roy as Brian Fraser and Harriet Slater as Ellen MacKenzie. A sentiment repeated frequently throughout my visit is that Scotland 'is its own character' in both Outlander and Outlander: Blood of my Blood . But the country's infamous weather doesn't pay much heed to call times. Roy says he and Slater had been looking forward to shooting the bridge scene 'for ages, because it's been with us since day one': They rehearsed it throughout their auditions and chemistry reads. But on the actual day of filming, 'we had four different seasons,' he says. 'It was blowing a gale, then it downpoured, then it started to sleet.' The river running beneath the bridge—all but a murmur in the finalized episode—was loud enough that both Roy and Slater had to use earpieces to understand each other. 'Half the time mine wouldn't work,' he continues. 'So I would see Harriet start to say something, her mouth would move, and then it would stop, and I'd be like, 'Oh, okay! My turn!' So that was quite funny.' 'Luckily we both knew each other's lines,' Slater adds. By the time they'd survived multiple rain delays and filmed several angles, the actors were both so cold that Roy wasn't sure he could speak. 'I couldn't feel my face at the end of each take,' he says. 'I wasn't even sure if words were coming out.' During their lunch break, he had to massage his mouth for 'half an hour, because I couldn't actually chew my food.' Of course, the weather cooperated just in time to give the scene the air of enchantment it needed to convince audiences Jamie and Ellen are indeed headed for a life-changing love affair. The wind whips up as Brian steps forward; the gloom parts to wash them both in sunlight. '[Jamie] has this line where he introduces himself for the first time, and he says, 'I'm Brian Fraser,' and [at one point] the sun just came out from behind the cloud behind him,' Slater tells me, laughing. 'It was almost like he was the Messiah.' Sanne Gault Jeremy Irvine as Henry Beauchamp and Hermione Corfield as Julia Moriston. Julia and Henry's first meeting is no less fateful, though it was perhaps easier to film. Shot on a set of steps in Glasgow's Park District, the scene depicts the couple passing each other by chance in 1917 London. But the 'magnetic draw between them,' Corfield says, is as potent as the one between Brian and Ellen. When Henry speaks aloud a line from their letters, Julia turns around, recognizing her soon-to-be husband in the flesh. 'We were both wondering how that was going to play,' Corfield admits. 'Because, on the page, it's quite interesting just seeing two people not saying anything, walking past each other on a step, and then one person says something and they both go, 'It's you.' It worked because of the romance between them.' Adds Irvine, '[Henry] tries his luck and says something, and it is her. We were joking, myself and Hermione, saying, 'How many other women has he been saying that to that day?'' But Outlander has always existed in a world where anything can happen. When Irvine asked showrunner Matthew B. Roberts about the logic of the scene, Roberts told him, 'Look, this is a romance that's got to have some magic about it.' Irvine continues, 'I didn't really understand that until I saw the episode cut together. I went, 'Yeah, this is something slightly out of this world.' If you believe in fate, and destiny, and soulmates, then this is how it happens.' That magic only intensifies when Julia and Henry's saga intersects with Brian and Henry's. On holiday in Scotland in the 20th century, Julia and Henry inadvertently tumble through time after encountering Outlander 's infamous stones of Craigh na Dun. They separately land in Scotland circa 1714, and they soon meet both the MacKenzies and the Frasers as they fight their way back to each other. Sanne Gault Jeremy Irvine as Henry Beauchamp and Hermione Corfield as Julia Moriston. Corfield was thrilled when she learned that, like Outlander , Blood of My Blood would feature a time-travel plot. 'It's a challenge to play someone that's time-traveled,' she says, 'I don't know any other job where you can possibly say that you are both in the [20th century] and also 1700 Scotland. So it was a challenge, but when I first started reading all the scenes taking place [in the 18th century], I was really excited.' It helps that the lead quartet have become close friends. 'We became actual mates before we had to become colleagues,' Irvine says. 'We spent a few months up here getting ready for the role and doing what production called 'boot camp,' learning all the things that we need to learn for the roles. In that time, we all became very close.' They often spend their evenings and weekends off set together, either singing karaoke in Glasgow or picnicking along one of the country's many lochs. 'We started this project in the depths of winter in Scotland,' Irvine continues. 'When you're doing that, you've got to go and have fun sometimes.' Sanne Gault Hermione Corfield as Julia Moriston. Sanne Gault Jeremy Irvine as Henry Beauchamp. This summer, Roy, Slater, Corfield, and Irvine are all back in the meadows of Scotland, already filming the next chapter. 'I feel very privileged to be shooting a season 2 before season 1's even come out,' Slater says. 'I'm very aware of how rare that is.' Roy shares in that sentiment. 'When we finished the last season, there was no guarantee,' he says. 'It's a spinoff. We don't know [if it will work]. So to get that call that says, 'Hey, we're going to do this again, and you get to revisit these characters and this story?' It is really just a privilege. I hope we get to do it for as long as possible.' Breaking Down the Outlander Family Tree
