LIFEGUARD - Crowd Can Talk/Dressed In Trenches LP

Highly recommended.

Combines two EPs to make for one excellent album.

"Things get even looser on their 2023 EP: For the first minute, “Ten Canisters (OFB)” crackles with the feedback and one-off drum fills of a band warming up, before taut guitar chords come crashing in. Lifeguard play confidently with atonality, wielding it like a weapon on the foreboding “Shutter Shutter,” and as a foil to their more pop-forward instincts. On “17-18 Lovesong,” Case’s monotone speak-singing establishes dissonance before Slater’s wistful counter-harmonies take hold. It can be tempting to draw comparisons to Case’s dad in FACS, but while the bands overlap in their post-punk sensibilities and British-leaning vocal inflections, Lifeguard cull from a wide avant garde lineage. It’s easy to hear Chicago’s Shellac and the Jesus Lizard in Slater’s screeching guitars, and unsurprisingly for a scene that takes its name from a Neu! song, there’s a heavy Krautrock influence in their motorik basslines." - Pitchfork