The first time I saw Lifetime it was one of those magical events
that could only happen to a teenager at an all-ages show. It was a
night of friendship, burgeoning romance, and standing so close to the
speakers that my chest rattled with every bass line and my eyes blinked
in unison with the crisp snap of the snare drum. Basically, a night
that resembles every single Lifetime song.
Lifetime are from New Jersey in the way the Boss is from New Jersey.
But if Springsteen drummed up street poetry of fuel-injected Americana
along the Jersey Shore, Lifetime’s view of the Garden State is strictly
underground—as in basement shows, where they, and countless
others of the same DIY pedigree cut their teeth playing all-age punk
sets next to the Maytag washer in whichever house was missing parents
for the weekend. The band even penned the ultimate punk ode to the show
below the ground in “Theme Song for a New Brunswick Basement Show,”
with its lovesick lyrics of “Do you hate this band too?/I smiled a
nervous smile, but I warmed up and acted cool standing by the stove/And
your eyes made it strange and I felt out of place/Wondering if you if
you could take her place.”
If those lyrics seem familiar, they should. After their breakup in
1997, bands began stealing from Lifetime’s grave long before the band’s
corpse went cold. Their legacy never had the time to properly develop,
seeing as their style was co-opted and driven straight into the ground
within a couple years of their split. What’s lost in the shuffle is the
fact that what Lifetime did in the mid-’90s was downright
revolutionary.
At that time, the East Coast hardcore landscape was a rigid world of
masculine aggression, one that did not take kindly to Lifetime’s
(literal) softening of the genre they held so dear. This “cut the shit,
start the pit” mentality was a mantra to a whole generation of
floor-punching young men who were baffled by Lifetime’s introspective
lyrics and forward-thinking ideology. (And it was only men. Like any
creatively bankrupt scene, the complete lack of women has a lot to do
with the poor musical product that was generated.) While choosing not
to be a brainless goon hardly seems like a radical decision, at that
time, and in those Jersey basements, it was an astonishing direction
for a hardcore band to take.
The band’s 1995 release, Hello Bastards, is still, to
this day, one of the pinnacle releases in not just hardcore, but punk
music in general. Lifetime’s songs were melodic, warm, and a welcome
invitation to hoards of DIY kids who were intimidated by the typical
hardcore thuggery. Like so many other seminal bands who didn’t get
their dues the first time around, Lifetime has returned for another go.
Now signed to the label of Pete Wentz (you might know him from his band
Fall Out Boy, and you might know his dick from all those photos that
were leaked online), the band recently released a self-titled album
that finds them picking up where they left off. That is, making every
song sound like it’s an endless summer evening in some kid’s basement,
where the music is far too loud, it’s way past your curfew, and you
never want the night to end.
Lifetime performs at Hawthorne Theatre on Friday, September
7.