Album Of The Week: Lifeguard Ripped And Torn

There are people who make a fine living by closely monitoring this nation’s youth sports leagues in hopes of finding players to replenish America’s college and professional teams. I wonder if Matador Records has a similar program, but for potential next-generation indie rock stars? The tastemaking institution established its rep by plucking Pavement, Guided by Voices, and Liz Phair from the tape-trading micro-release deep underground, and in the past decade or so it’s shown a keen interest in what the young people are getting up to, ushering young acts like Snail Mail, Car Seat Headrest, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus into the big leagues after they built up varying degrees of buzz. More recently, the “cool parents and after-school music programs to Matador Records” pipeline remained remarkably strong with the young Chicago trio Horsegirl, and now it’s given us the young Chicago trio Lifeguard, an outstanding coup by Matador’s perhaps apocryphal youth development division. Raises all around.