This summer is the first where Lifeguard say they feel properly busy. Lifeguard juggle so much as a band and as individuals that it’s hard to imagine how their schedules function-that is, until you remember how high school time is its own type of magic, where hours feel like days that stretch on endlessly. At the diner, they order like kids with fast metabolisms do: chocolate milkshakes, strawberry cheesecake, pastrami sandwiches and patty melts with the works. Too humble to mention their own solo projects, they each sneak in compliments about the other’s new work: Slater writes 1960s-style jangle pop songs that sound like lost classics as Sharp Pins, Lowenstein’s obsession with Autechre and synth experimentation takes shape as Donkey Basketball, and Case is working on an as-yet-unnamed project inspired by Patsy Cline and Townes Van Zandt. In the car, the trio start swapping opinions on recent releases in their pocket of Chicago’s music scene. With rain falling down in thick sheets outside the museum, Slater offers to drive everyone to Eleven City Diner for lunch. A mission statement is stamped on the back in all caps: “YOUTH REVOLUTION NOW.” “DEAR YOUTH SCENE! SMOKING TOBACCO IS NOT HOT,” reads a full-page spread. In one issue, Slater named every album Lifeguard listened to on a recent tour, from Lungfish to Boards of Canada to Star Wars soundtracks. Interviews with artists like Michael Rother of Neu! and Chicago experimentalist Circuit Des Yeux are sandwiched between mutual aid listings, collages, and oddball quotes billed as inspiration. Independently produced by hand, the zine has nine editions so far, each more charming and in-depth than the last.

Hallogallo is Slater’s love letter to discovering DIY and experimental music of the past and present. “It feels like everyone involved is really desperate to make music-like it’s not a choice, but their natural role.”Ī key part of fostering this community was developing a way to communicate during the strictest part of the pandemic, so the collective turned to zines. “If it’s a young band and it sounds cool and it’s from Chicago, then that’s what this is for,” says Slater. It’s a wholesome utopia that shows what kids can create when given time, space, and support.

They started forming a close-knit, ever-expanding collective alongside Horsegirl dubbed Hallogallo, complete with showcases featuring bands like Post Office Winter and Flower Grease that they booked themselves. In that sudden silence, he and his bandmates felt the need to step up and rekindle a sense of community. Lowenstein describes a thriving basement DIY scene among the city’s high schoolers that came to an abrupt halt due to COVID-19. All that ingenuity paid off in December 2022 when they combined forces with fellow local acts Friko and Cafe Racer to book the 1,100-capacity Metro, one of Chicago’s most storied rock venues. Over the past year, they’ve played gigs in a gift shop, an elementary school, a bike store, and a barn-turned-banquet hall. These teenagers already have plenty of experience reimagining what defines a live space-a necessity since the majority of the low-capacity locations perfect for a rising band like Lifeguard are 21-plus, if not bars outright. “We’re constantly searching for places to play.” They start mocking up a stage layout amid the grime and bugs. “Let’s play a show right here,” Lowenstein proposes. “This is a triumph of the DIY,” declares Slater. As Lifeguard stand before a dead root the size of a tree trunk covered in gnarly webs and rotund beetles, their creative wheels start spinning, as they always seem to be. At the museum, real termites light up in a nest, an enormous mole cricket crawls out of a wall, and fungi sprouts from a ledge.

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