You Recognize That This Is Noise, Right? - On Beauty Pill's Blue Period and Describes Things As They Are
The internet moves quickly, sure, and there are certain pockets of the internet that might feel like they are moving a little faster than others. Social media is one of those pockets—specifically when you find something, or see something, in a place like Twitter or Instagram. The sites are so clunky and unpredictable in how they generate and then display information, that if something of interest appears on your screen, the odds of you being able to successfully or efficiently retrace your steps in order to find it again, later on, are slim.
Something to note about Chad Clark, of the many things to note about him—the de facto “frontman,” multi-instrumentalist, and founder of the group Beauty Pill, is that he’s incredibly earnest and quite active on social media; Twitter more than Instagram, but regular updates from him can be found on both platforms—occasionally about the band, most recently about his dog’s charming bedtime rituals, and near the beginning of 2023, a quote tweet from Clark w/r/t the forthcoming (at the time) Beauty Pill anthology and reissue, Blue Period, made its way into my feed.
And because Twitter is a pocket of the internet that moves a little faster than I’d like it to some of the time, I am unable to recall how it ended up there, mere days before Blue Period’s release.
And regardless of whatever algorithm was responsible for putting Clark’s tweet in front of my face, what he said in it caught my attention for myriad reasons—one of which was, of course, generating enough curiosity, or interest, to begin investigating Beauty Pill’s relatively small but impressively dynamic output, and the inevitable introduction to Clark’s connections within the Washington D.C. punk and post-punk scenes in the 1990s and early 2000.
One of the other reasons was the tweet itself—like, what he had written, and the sentiment behind it. And that even in paraphrasing it slightly to myself over the last five months until I was able to comb through his feed in order to find it again, his earnestness resonated with me.
He wrote, “Ian MacKaye used to try to console me by saying, ‘People won’t get what you’re doing until 10 or 15 years after you do it.’ His superpower is being right about everything, always. It’s annoying.”
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And I feel like at this point, nearly six months after the release of Blue Period—a double LP that collects Beauty Pill’s debut full-length, The Unsustainable Lifestyle, originally issued in 2004, as well as its predecessor, You Are Right to Be Afraid, an EP from 2003, alongside a handful of demos and ephemera of the era—and roughly two months since the release of the Record Store Day exclusive reissue of the band’s sophomore full-length, Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are, from 2015 (yes there is a nine-year gap in between albums), the history of both Chad Clark and Beauty Pill have been pretty well documented in any press surrounding both of these albums, but I also believe they are worth mentioning again.
Or, at the very least, mentioning here for context, or if you have not spent the bulk of your 2023, so far, reading everything you could about a new musical discovery.
Something I didn’t realize about the early days of the legendary punk label Dischord, and their roster of bands or albums released under the imprint, was how many were one-off, or very short-lived projects, comprised of members from other bands associated with the label. It’s a bit disorienting, truthfully, to be reading about one band, then be sent down a rabbit hole of learning about, like, two or three groups that may or may not be similar in sound, then sent down an additional rabbit hole of listening to a song or two from all of these acts.
Following his work as a producer and engineer for a number of now-iconic post-punk records in the late 1990s and very early 2000s, Chad Clark assembled the initial iteration of Beauty Pill after the dissolution of the original group he had been a part of, Smart Went Crazy1—who had released two critically lauded and moderately successful full-lengths, Now We’re Even, in 1996, and Con Art, in 1997, before calling it quits the following year because of, as the group’s brief Wikipedia entry states, “increasing division in the band.”
Clark discusses it, and the long-term effect it had on him, in an interview with Paste, from January, around the time of Blue Period’s arrival, but after two EPs as an introduction to Beauty Pill, initially released in 2001 and 2003, respectively, the band’s debut in 2004 was strangely not as well received by listeners or critics, comparatively, to the reception he had been given when he was still fronting Smart Went Crazy.
And it is not addressed in Pitchfork’s review2 of Blue Period—they gave it a 7.4, but the site, still in its infancy in the early 2000s and was, at the time, seen as the ultimate, make or break, tastemakers of “indie rock,” gave The Unsustainable Lifestyle a scathing review upon its release.
Given a 5.7 out of 10, the piece itself, written by Sam Ubl, who appears to have left music writing behind and perhaps disappeared from the internet completely (a forum thread titled “That One Shitty Pitchfork Critic Strikes Again!” is the second result when you search “Sam Ubl + Pitchfork”), wasted no time diving head first into his sardonic vitriol about Clark as a songwriter and bandleader, the album itself, and then rallying against the latter-day output from Dischord as a label—the vitriol, delivered in a “holier than thou”/High Fidelity haughtiness that was commonplace and probably encouraged amongst the writers contributing to the site in its earliest years.
The site takes itself entirely too seriously now, two decades later, to give the space to its writers to put pieces like that one together, but a majority of the earliest reviews on Pitchfork, even into the late 2000s, and even if the album were given a relatively high numeral rating, were steeped in a biting, pretentious sense of humor that upon revisiting, time has not been kind to.
In 2004, Clark was not expecting, nor was he admittedly ready, to accept, with any kind of grace or humility, that level of a negative response to his art, and he did not really anticipate the sort of ripple effect it would have on the relatively new project.
“Memory is not like a computer,” he explained to Pat King of Paste. “Memory is affected by emotion. My memory of these things is feeling hurt a lot. Feeling disappointed, and that lasted for a very long time.”
“I’m a sensitive person,” he continued. “And that probably colors my ideas of what happened.”
Now, nearly 20 years later, you would like to think that listeners, generally speaking, are capable of listening for themselves and making their own decisions about what they like, and what they don’t, but in 2004, internet music criticism, specifically from a site that was becoming such a “big deal” like Pitchfork was at the time, could truly either help an artist’s career, or severely hurt it depending on the review they received, and the opinion of its writers could, for whatever reason, really pull potential listeners in one direction, or the other.
And it, apparently, was not just Pitchfork that failed to grasp, or appreciate, The Unsustainable Lifestyle—similarly dismissive reviews were published elsewhere, and as the interview and article from Paste explains, any momentum that Beauty Pill had built for itself up until that point began to wane rather quickly in the wake of this perplexingly negative press.
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Something to note about Chad Clark, of the many things to note about him—he is on his third heart.
And similar to how the rise and subsequent fall of, at least, this earlier incarnation of Beauty Pill in the early 2000s, and the baseless criticisms The Unsustainable Lifestyle was subjected to nearly 20 years ago have been discussed at length in the press surrounding the Blue Period anthology, Clark’s ongoing health issues have been repeatedly brought up, as well.
A piece published in January, about Clark and Beauty Pill, from “Rolling Stone,” opens with a short anecdote that both reveals the overall severity of Clark’s ongoing circumstances, but also the sobering and somewhat dark sense of humor he has tried to hang on to about all of it.
While recovering from open heart surgery in 2021, Clark recalled a visit from his friend Bill Beverly. “I asked him, ‘How are you doing? And he said, ‘Well, you know—first heart.’”
Then, after laughing at the punchline of his own story, Clark continued. “That’s exactly his style of humor. It’s subtle and fantastic. And I’m jealous of people who are on their first heart.”
Beauty Pill never broke up—not really, but members came and went, especially after the turbulent times following the release of The Unsustainable Lifestyle, and Clark never really left performing behind him—not really. Work with the band intentionally slowed down while he focused on production and engineering for others at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia.
It was during this time that, while already dealing with the ongoing disappointment and inevitable spiral into depression brought on by the less-than-enthusiastic reception to Beauty Pill’s debut, Clark was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy—a disease of the heart muscle that makes it difficult for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body.
Something to note about Chad Clark, of the many things to note about him—he is on his third heart. In 2008, he underwent open heart surgery and was the recipient of a mechanical or electronic heart to replace his own—a device that served him until just recently, when he had another emergency heart surgery to remove the electronic heart (it had, apparently, been recalled by its manufacturer) and replace it with a heart transplant from a donor.
“I have now survived many situations that I’m going to say should have killed me,” he told Paste. “It’s a weird thing to contemplate.”
Beauty Pill never really broke up—not really. In the same piece from Paste, Clark explains that regardless of however hard he tried to walk away, “Music would not let me go.”
Shortly before Clark’s health took a turn, a new, six-piece lineup of Beauty Pill recorded the song
“Ann The Word,” originally shared as a one-off single on the group’s MySpace page in 2006. The song is a rather drastic departure from the group’s earlier sound, straying far from the more standard “rock” arranging of The Unsustainable Lifestyle, or even what Clark had been doing with Smart Went Crazy, and instead, interpolated a seemingly Japanese-inspired melody, and embraces complex, electronic, atmospheric textures.
Five years before the release of the group’s sophomore album, Describes Things As They Are, which “Ann The Word” would ultimately find a home within, Clark and Beauty Pill wrote and recorded the score to the play suicide.chat.room; the songs would eventually be released a decade later under the album title Sorry You’re Here.
And if you were to glance at the 2020 release date for it on the group’s Bandcamp page, you’d think it was simply a continuation of the sound that Clark and Beauty Pill inevitably developed in the time before they headed into the recording of Describes—but the layered, densely textured, and electronically minded sound that courses throughout the tracks from Sorry You’re Here are really the precursor to the atheistic that the band, in this iteration, have held onto tightly for well over a decade.
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And it has been fascinating, as someone who was not familiar with Beauty Pill until seeing a tweet about the band, and the Blue Period anthology shortly before its official release, to immerse myself in both that reissue as well as the slightly more recent reissue of Describes Things As They Are for Record Store Day, because there is such a contrast in dynamics and ultimately in aesthetics between the two collections—so different, or distinct, that it doesn’t exactly sound like these albums were made by two different bands (Clark’s voice is instantly recognizable once you become familiar with his cadence and range, and his sense of humor is present in the lyrics in both) but it is, in a way, kind of two different bands.
Or, at the very least, two different iterations of a band, with nine years of difficult space between the two. There are similarities, sure, outside of Clark’s vocals—sometimes the similarities are subtle, but are just enough so that the songs recorded for The Unsustainable Lifestyle can stretch out and just barely touch, or even graze, portions of Describes Things As They Are. It is their differences though—both albums representative of a specific time and place, and both absolutely fearless in their own right—that make them both as genuinely interesting and thought-provoking to sit down and spend time with.
The thing that I guess is most surprising to me, though, and perhaps I can say this because so much time has passed between the release of The Unsustainable Lifestyle and Describes Things As They Are, but there is a part of me that has a hard time understanding why fans, or at least regular or active listeners of Clark’s work with Smart Went Crazy failed to understand and appreciate what he was doing, initially, in Beauty Pill—though I suppose that, as there are familiar elements between both the first and second Beauty Pill records, the differences are much more apparent upon an initial listen.
Both Now We’re Even, and Con Art are fine albums—there are certain things that make them a product of their time, indeed, and the kind of unpredictable, in moments, or the frenetic nature of Smart Went Crazy’s sound is something that, as a whole, is missing, or at least there is a lack of, most certainly an intentional choice, when comparing those albums, or that specific sound to the songs on The Unsustainable Lifestyle.
But I guess it is just surprising to me, and again, I can say this now as a listener who is listening to all of this material with relatively fresh ears, that audiences were unwilling to make the leap from what Clark had been doing, to what he chose to do next.
And there is a fine line—even from one album to the next for an artist, but especially when one project comes to an end and another, eventually begins—where as much as you want the artist in question to grow, or evolve, as a musician or songwriter, there is some portion of you that would simply like to hear more of what you were familiar with.
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Structurally, Blue Period has a lot of material to work with, or account for, and perhaps because it has so much to accommodate, it is ultimately sequenced and spaced across four sides of vinyl in a way that winds up being slightly awkward, or at the very least just frustrating in terms of organization and distinction.
And it is curious that within what Clark refers to as Beauty Pill’s “Blue Period”—the dates 2002 to 2004 are listed within the anthology’s title, it does not include the band’s debut EP, The Cigarette Girl From The Future, initially issued in 2001.
Though, and again, this is just a retrospective assessment of all of these canonical works through a fresh 2023 lens, perhaps Clark did not consider Cigarette Girl to be a collection of songs recorded when things felt so inherently “blue,” for lack of a better word—the music itself, anecdotally, is far less reserved when compared to the full length that would arrive three years later, and sonically it has much more in common with the kind of dizzying and dense exuberance of Smart Went Crazy.
Cigarette Girl, also, was recorded when Beauty Pill was operating as a three-piece—this early iteration of the group proved too difficult to tour to support the EP, and it quickly dissolved before Clark figuratively and literally regrouped by assembling the quintet that went on to record The Unsustainable Lifestyle.
And there are certainly layers to unpack within the title of this anthology—Blue Period. The most apparent layer involves Clark’s misgivings, or difficult emotions and memories surrounding this era—the release of the album and then the disappointment and depression that would come shortly after that.
But the other layer, which is more subtle, is the depression, or at least darkness or bleakness, that was already there—the depression, or bleakness, and how it is handled throughout The Unsustainable Lifestyle is not what initially drew me to throw myself into the canonical works of Beauty Pill and its founder Chad Clark, but it is ultimately what caused me to remain as invested and connected as I have been, making the group, in all of its iterations and sonic shifts over the last 20 years, as compelling as they are to me as a listener and analyst of music, but also as an important “new to me” discovery.
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Something that struck me almost immediately when I first began listening to Blue Period was, within the songs that originally were released as The Unsustainable Lifestyle, just how diverse and dynamic the record is from song to song in terms of an aesthetic—musically, and in terms of the arranging that happens throughout and huge shifts it can take the further along it goes, it is a collection of songs that, even if you already know what’s around the corner, it continues to surprise with subsequent listens.
Beauty Pill, at least at this time, and save for one of the more idiosyncratic and experimental moments on the record at its halfway point, was working primarily in a pretty standard “rock band” structure in terms of instrumentation—electric guitars, drums, bass, and subtle keyboards. But it is what Clark and his assemblage of players during this era do with those instruments and the lines between genres that they blur completely that makes it such an impressive and genuinely interesting album to sit with and truly immerse yourself in.
Blue Period begins with the simmering tension of “Goodnight For Real,” which, if you are listening closely through a set of headphones, opens with a brief moment of quiet intimacy within the studio—the sound of shuffling, or preparation to begin playing the song, as the bass drum starts thudding like a heartbeat, and there is this gentle kind of push, or slight lift off from the ground as the other instruments begin swirling and tumbling around to find their way into the song’s stirring rhythm.
And even within the sense of reserve or tension that “Goodnight For Real” begins with, it does eventually build itself into a place where the song’s instrumentation doesn’t exactly blast off, but Clark and the rest of Beauty Pill do lose the restraints slightly when it arrives in its choruses, where there is a playful, almost whimsical synthesizer melody that twinkles and pulses just underneath the quickly strummed guitar; and as the song reaches its climax, the restraints are loosened a little bit more with bright, punchy, bursts of electric guitar chugs and sharp hits of the snare drum.
From there, as Blue Period opens with what could be heard as a kind of guitar-heavy, borderline jangly “indie rock” sound—Beauty Pill does not spend too much time within one very clear kind of stylistic. As the songs from The Unsustainable Lifestyle continue, things are turned inward and quite skeletal in comparison with the pensive acoustic guitar (with no other accompaniment) on “Prison Song,” before exploding outwardly again with “Western Prayer.”
Deeply rooted in a robust and unrelenting rhythm and propelled forward by layers of rollicking, intense percussion, “Western Prayer,” along with its frenzied electric guitar work, is the closest that Clark comes to recapturing, or at least revisiting, the kind of unpredictable and often unhinged, layered and groove ladened sounds from Smart Went Crazy.
After “Western Prayer,” is “Such Big Portions,” which is one of the moments on Blue Period that is both surprising while remaining immediately accessible or at least infectious in the way it plays with melody tucked into enormous sounding, torrential guitar theatrics—steering itself into well-done dream pop-inspired, or shoegaze adjacency with how heavy, or bombastic it can be, but also absolutely soars to impressive and inherently anthemic heights within its chorus.
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They don’t wanna save your life—they just want to distract you for a while…
The nature of Clark’s lyricism, particularly during the Blue Period era for the band, adds another compelling layer to the already fascinating sound and energy that Beauty Pill has. There are times when there is the implication that a song is, perhaps, a little more personal in its depiction than others; there are times when a song leans into a kind of startling and biting social commentary; and then there is the mix of clever, attention-grabbing lyrics woven into a tighter and entirely more fragmented or vague larger kind of narrative.
Dogs, and maybe it’s not all that surprising given Clark’s fondness for his own companion animal, Stanley, are often a fascinating point of reference. “Pet the bomb-sniffing dog,” vocalist Rachel Burke sings when the torrential waves of ferocious guitars let up on “Such Large Portions.” “It’s friendly, though it’s on the job.”
Later, in hazy, borderline psychedelic “Quote Devout Unquote,” “Dog spit is cleaner than human—same goes for cognition”; then, near the album’s end, on the dreamy, quivering “I’m Just Going to Close My Eyes for A Second,” the stark and deprecating line that the first verse ends on, “I was the seeing-eye dog that left your side.”
“Quote Devout Unquote,” similar to one of the songs placed near the top of the record, “The Mule on The Plane,” is among the few that are less impactful as a whole for me, though there are certain lines, or at least portions of the narrative, that does stay with you. “Mule,” as heavy-handed as it is, is about the ambivalence toward a woman tasked with carrying drugs from one place to another, while “Devout” features one of the more sardonic observations from the record: “Santa Claus—he died for your sins.”
Somewhere between this more kind of ambiguous, fragmented lyrics, and the more personal, clever, or biting commentary or reflection, is the writing found in the opening track, to the collection—“Goodnight For Real,” where he paints a surprisingly evocative picture by using just a few very vivid phrases, but there is still kind of a vague, partially sardonic, dreamlike logic to how it all unfolds.
“There’s a band on stage tonight, and every note they play turns its back to you,” Clark begins, his voice kind of quiet, finding its way between the layers of guitar and the driving percussive beat. “But still, you add them to the sad list of things you’ve said ‘yes’ to,” he continues.
“And they don’t wanna save your life—they just want to distract you for a while. And the new dance craze is the same as the old one,” he concludes. “The unsustainable lifestyle.”
The chorus, where “Goodnight For Real” dips into something infectious and swaying, is where Clark mutters the expression, like a mantra, “There’s only so much oxygen,” several times, before punctuating it with, “Left in the room.”
And there is, of course, something to unpack, or at least try to understand there, in Clark’s observations as the album begins—there is something to try and understand or unpack from a lot of the writing on Blue Period, regardless of its a song that works more in metaphor, or if it is intended to be little more literal.
Here, there seems to be something about the detachment or lack of connection between the audience and the musician, at least in this narrative, and how both sides are on the cusp of understanding that the other is simply going through the motions.
The more personal, or at least introspective, ruminations are peppered throughout Blue Period, like in the acoustic “Prison Song,” and the downcast, almost haunting indie rock of “Nancy Medley, Girl Genius, Age 15.” The former arrives as a breakup song of sorts—one of the few times throughout Blue Period where there is this kind of obvious depiction of a dissolving connection between two individuals. “Will you come visit me when I’m in prison?,” Burke asks harrowingly. “My outside sweetheart—bring me birthday cakes with contraband inside?,” she continues.
The song, though, is about a choice—as it is put within the song: “What’s reasonable to expect from you? Sayonara or staying true? Posting bail or bailing out?” And the juxtaposition from the birthday cake filled with contraband comes in the gorgeous delivery of the second verse—“Will you write me a tear-soaked letter. The last two words: “I tried.” Or will you keep believing in our future ‘cause it’s kinder just to lie.”
“Nancy Medley” finds Clark tapping into the biting social observations that culminate elsewhere on the record, but here, he depicts a kind of desperation to feel more at ease within a crowd he is uncomfortable within, at the behest of a romantic partner, though he ultimately expresses a dizzying mix of resentment and regret at his decision. “There were drugs on a shelf, and I couldn’t help myself,” he begins while the music literally swirls disorientingly behind him. “Got freaked out by your scene, so I altered my chemistry. Now I’m out of my mind and deliriously blind—clinking cordial with you and your kind.”
The sadness and vitriol converge in the slowly swaying chorus: “Now I fit in with all of your stupid friends.”
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I have this problem with naps—depression naps, I call them, mostly, because of both how I feel as I enter into them, and how I feel upon waking from them. And the problem comes from, what I suppose, is the struggle within myself, and that I do not believe I deserve to rest, even if a majority of my body is telling me otherwise.
The urge, or desire, or thought, to just rest my eyes for a few minutes, often overtakes me in moments when I am not in motion—when I am not doing laundry, or cleaning something, or preparing food for the home; it overtakes me in moments when I am sitting still, and find that even if I do have the interest, or some motivation toward wanting to open up my laptop and continue working on whatever writing project I am in the midst of, that it can be difficult to remain focused, or stave off the sadness that is always just a step or two behind me.
So I slowly close my computer and, as I can feel how heavy my eyes are growing, and comprehending just how exhausted I often am, I take a number of factors into account—one of which, and perhaps this is the most important one—is knowing before I even remove the glasses from my face or set the alarm for, like, a half-hour—sometimes less, sometimes a little more—that I am going to feel like absolute shit if I do, in fact, given into the desire to rest my eyes. I will wake up—not even from a deep sleep, but from that strange place between being awake, and partially aware of your surroundings, but also drifting slowly into a dream—and everything will feel worse.
I will feel more tired. My eyes will feel even heavier—like they are starting to sink further into my skull. I will feel disoriented to the point you would believe I had been in a coma for days, or weeks, upon awakening, rather than simply asleep for a matter of minutes. I will be groggy. I will be in a foul mood, and the rest of the day, in terms of working on anything that requires creativity or focus, will be shot to shit.
And I will still be sad. I will still want to cry. The depression, once two steps behind, has now caught up.
I take a number of factors into account—one of the final ones is what my therapist has been trying to tell me, which is I do deserve to rest, whether I believe it or not. And that it is okay to acknowledge, as my eyes begin to close, just for a little bit, that I am going to feel like total shit when I open them again. But that I just need this brief moment where I can, temporarily, cease over-functioning.
I’m just gonna close my eyes for a second
Arriving as the penultimate track to The Unsustainable Lifestyle, and sequenced near the top of the first side to the second LP in the Blue Period anthology, when I began listening to Beauty Pill, the title, “I’m Just Gonna Close My Eyes For A Second” was one of the first things that caught my attention.
Musically, there is a very “guitar-centric indie rock of the era” feeling, or atmosphere created instantly once the first, pointed snare hits ricochets through “Close My Eyes.” The rhythm itself, built on a unique kind of bouncing give and take in intensity and emphasis, lays the groundwork for the dueling electric guitar melodies that drift into the space—the first one, played on the lower strings, quietly comes in first and resonates through the percussion, while the second, plucked on the higher strings, creates a shimmering, dreamy antithesis. Neither is fighting for dominance within the structure, but are just circling one another endlessly to create something that is an absolute marvel to hear.
There is a surprising kind of disconnected way that vocalist Rachel Burke delivers the lyrics to “Close My Eyes”—perhaps it’s from the range she’s in, pushing and then pulling her voice to meet one, or the other, of the guitar lines simply in terms of tone. It works well, and creates a sense of unease, or at least, discomfort, as the song begins, and she almost speaks, rather than sings, the first line, spacing out the syllables so they fall very deliberately, in time, onto the guitar string plucks. “Into the abyss—high beams on,” she begins.
“After the severance pay is gone,” she continues, before allowing her voice to drift, just slightly, into a little bit of a higher register, asking, “Where do you plan to hide?”
“I was the seeing-eye dog that left your side,” Burke concedes, and then before even taking a breath before the chorus, reaches the titular phrase, “I’m just gonna close my eyes for a second,” she explains in a much lower, and ominous kind of way that creates a startling sense of dissonance between her voice, and the lower notes that are played on the guitar at the same time.
Clark and Beauty Pill do play with dissonance, off and on, throughout their canon—it is more apparent, and perhaps more intentional in how it is used later on when the band reconvened to record Describes Things As They Are, but there are flickers of it here—just moments where there is palpable friction within the song from two things rubbed together that, perhaps, shouldn’t have been—never enough to turn you away from the song, or the band, but it is enough to take notice, and even in the dissonance, or however mildly unsettling the sound might become, it is yet another facet of the group that makes them so wildly fascinating to spend time with.
Among the spectrum of the kind of lyrics Clark is penning for Beauty Pill—specifically on The Unsustainable Lifestyle, at the moment where the more abstract, and the more personal or introspective converge, there is still room for interpretation, and on “I’m Just Gonna Close My Eyes For A Second,” there is quite a bit that is left up to the listener in terms of the action itself, and reason behind it, as Burke sings a majority of the song in a tone that borders on deadpan, and the titular phrase, arriving as the chorus, becomes a factual statement, and it is left up to us to determine if it’s done out of feeling desperate, overwhelmed, exhausted, plagued by a sadness we can never seem to get out from, or a little bit of it all.
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And it is perhaps because I first became, like, really aware of Dischord as a label at the end of 2000, when I was a senior in high school, and found myself suddenly interested in Fugazi, the imprint’s most well-known name, that I forever associate it as being a “punk label.” And I mean, it is, I guess, a label that has released a lot of punk albums, but there are acts that were signed to Dischord throughout its history that are not punk in the sense that you, or I, are thinking, when we hear that descriptor.
Part of the issue taken with The Unattainable Lifestyle when it was initially covered by Pitchfork in 2004 was the writer’s belief that latter-day bands signed to Dischord were of diminishing returns when compared to the records released via the label during its earlier years in the 1980s and through the 1990s—Beauty Pill, by sound, is not exactly a “punk” band in the sense that they play loud and fast, or are antagonistic in their aesthetic. And you can argue about genres and sub-genres and what they mean, if anything, like post-rock, or post-punk, but what I have come to understand, at least with the Beauty Pill material from Blue Period, all of which was initially released through Dischord, with the label giving its blessing for the reissue to arrive through a different label Clark had a connection with—what I have come to understand is that there is a punk ethos to Beauty Pill. Meaning Clark, and his band, are not playing loud and fast, and are not exactly confrontational in how they antagonize, but they are making music that can, and often will, challenge the listener, asking them to think, and perhaps asking more of them than another band might.
And this is, perhaps, a long way of introducing my surprise at the rather experimental piece that arrives around the halfway point of The Unsustainable Lifestyle—“Won’t You Be Mine,” sample-heavy, with Clark’s vocals drifting more into a kind of speak/sing—not quite rapping, but very close—it seems like the kind of song that would not find a comfortable home within an album released on a “punk” label. But after thinking about it more, I realized that what would be more punk, in philosophy, than challenging the listener like this?
“Won’t You Be Mine,” and maybe you can already guess from the title, heavily uses a sample from “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”—both snippets of Fred Rogers himself speaking, but also a jaunty, playful, slightly chopped up portion of a piano melody from the episode of “Mr. Rogers’” in question, which serves as the base for which strummed acoustic guitar and percussion come shuffling in on top of. The idea of a “groove-oriented” song is something that Clark and Beauty Pill would certainly explore the idea of a decade later on Describes Things As They Are, but here, he and the band create a surprising, head-nodding rhythm that sets the stage for him to deliver some of the album’s most startling lyrics.
“F R I E N D,” the familiar, gentle twang of Fred Rogers’ voice rattles off. “That’s the way we spell friend,” he tells us, before spelling it a second time, before concluding, “I think it’s time for some make-believe,” which signals the start of the song, and the strummed guitar and dirge-like percussion to come lumbering in.
After intentionally stuttering, or ad-libbing with the first two words of the opening line of the song, Clark begins by declaring, “The leash is loose enough to feel like autonomy.” And, just two lines later, when he repeats it, he follows it up with something mischievous. “But you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Won’t You Be Mine,” lyrically, as it continues to unfold and spiral in a playful, kind of whimsical, but also extremely unsettlingly way, is a stark, razor-sharp take on race—not that racism wasn’t a problem in 2004, but a song like this, in the way in unpacks racial dynamics is truly ahead of its time, which is I think is what, aside from the way it juxtaposes something so hideous against music that glistens with an ironic smirk to it, as a means of distraction, makes it so surprising and somewhat difficult to hear—it’s the kind of thing, and the kind of serious issues that there is still a struggle to address 20 years later.
“Money is here if you want it,” Clark explains as the first verse continues. “And they love when you flaunt it,” he continues. “You will find as you’re forfeiting all your power, the applause gets louder.”
As the song continues into its second verse, the kind of ambiguity Clark uses in his narrative, and allusions, begins to fade, and “Won’t You Be Mine,” and the seriousness of the song’s lyrics becomes more and more apparent.
A word that Clark uses throughout, especially in the frenetic way that the song ends, as not just a word but as a question—and a loaded one at that, is “Brother,” which he asks twice at the start of the second verse. “Brother? Brother? Don’t know about that. My whole family knows how to act,” he continues as the music bounces along behind him. “We don’t shake hands that are dripping with blood,” he attests. “Check out the ‘Song of The South’ bluebirds face down in the plantation mud.”
The central conceit of “Won’t You Be Mine,” and the entendre that Clark plays with in terms of the phrase made famous by Fred Rogers, comes in the song’s short chorus, where he calmly, though sardonically asks, “What I really want to know is are you my ni**a?,” before following it up with the punchline: “If you could hear this, would you care that you made me theirs?”
*
I have these thoughts in the summertime too…
Something that I have come to appreciate a lot more, and recognize, the older I get, is the way that, if a songwriter is operating within a specific level of thought, or intelligence, they can effortlessly pull off the contrast between lyrics that are inherently dark, or bleak, and music that is so infectious, or in some cases, captivating, it distracts the listener almost entirely (at least at first) from what is at the core of the song.
Beauty Pill, near the very top of this collection, does this with the dizzying, restless, and impressive “Lifeguard in Wintertime”—and if, when I first was pointed in the direction of Beauty Pill, and the Blue Period anthology, the evocative nature of the song title, “I”m Just Gonna Close My Eyes For A Second,” was enough to initially get my attention, “Lifeguard in Wintertime” was the song that grabbed hold of that attention, and has not loosened its grip since.
“Lifeguard” begins already in progress—the fade-in, however gradual or brief, is a genuinely interesting choice in contemporary popular music, and one that bands do not often opt for. But here, we fade very abruptly in on the ping-ponging sound of snare hits, clattering metallic percussive sounds, and a snarling electric guitar, all building a very dizzying, frenetic energy that is pretty similar in spirit, or tone, to the kind of work Clark would regularly tap into with his work in Smart Went Crazy.
This introduction to “Lifeguard,” though, is not so much a bait and switch, but the song does reach a peak, and resolves into something much more somber sounding about 30 seconds in—the guitar, still a little unhinged and dissonant, coasts and skitters on top of a pretty standard rhythm that the song maintains as Rachel Burke’s voice comes in.
Musically, at least for a bulk of the song, “Lifeguard” operates from within a kind of guitar-centric indie rock sound that is prevalent for the majority of the songs on The Unsustainable Lifestyle—there is a tension here, though, in the way it is paced, that is I think intended to compliment the sheer darkness of the lyrics, but in complimenting them, it also serves as a slight distraction. It is easy to get lost, or overtaken, by the vibe of the song as a whole—dreamy, a little woozy, and not realize the gravity of the words coming from Burke’s mouth.
Something that I have not exactly come to understand, but have noticed regardless, in speaking with others—friends, acquaintances, etc.—about mental health, is that a lot of folks tend to do worse in the winter. “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” or SAD, is commonly referred to as—the lack of sunlight, shorter days, longer nights, colder temperatures, the isolation of staying indoors, et al. There is the belief that when the seasons shift into spring, and then summer, people will perhaps thrive more, or feel more like themselves—longer days, warm temperatures, and the ability to bask in the sunshine, more time out of doors, reconnecting with friends.
And I am not in a position to be dismissive, or skeptical, of how others feel, deep down, during different seasons, or portions of the year—their lived experiences are not the same as mine.
And what struck me the most, and hit me the hardest, about “Lifeguard in Wintertime,” is how much the conceit, or punchline of the song, resonated with me, and the debilitating depression that I am always—regardless of the time of year, or the temperature outside, or how much daylight I am able to take in—plagued by.
There is no actual chorus to “Lifeguard”—a series of lines that are repeated once, yes, but it follows an unconventional structure in just unfurling with extremely vivid and horrific imagery that is detailed, as difficult as it is to hear, rather beautifully.
“If you took a dive, from that diving board, you would dive into dry porcelain,” Burke begins. “With rusting paint turning the basing floor from baby blue to dirty cinnamon.”
“This would mix, of course, with your fresh spilled blood,” she continues. “Which would turn wine-dark in the evening air. It would be a wholly different experience than landing in the water you were told would be there.”
The arranging then switches to a reserved kind of stuttering build-up that pauses after a couple of beats, with that moment when things drop out, allowing the words to hang in the air just a little longer, and for the weight of the lyrics to make their true impact.
“Such a gruesome thing to be imagining,” Burke sings in a higher, breathier register. “This season makes me cruel—I have these thoughts in the summertime too.”
“Lifeguard” has no actual resolution to the internal, or personal conflict it depicts—instead, it eventually finds itself spiraling again, in terms of its instrumentation, back into to the chaotic energy it began with—the clattering rhythm and searing, distended guitar work, which carries it out to to the end.
Something that I have not exactly come to understand, but have noticed regardless, in speaking with others about mental health, is that a lot of folks tend to do worse in the winter. “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” or SAD, it is commonly referred to as, and there is a belief that when the seasons shift into spring, and then summer, people will perhaps thrive more, or feel more like themselves.
I am not in a position to be dismissive, or skeptical, of how others feel, deep down, during different seasons, or portions of the year—their lived experiences are not the same as mine.
I have these thoughts in the summertime, too.
*
I’ve seen Blade Runner three times, I think.
Once, for sure, when I was entirely too young to appreciate anything about it—in junior high or high school. Not old enough to really have a comprehension about the art of filmmaking, or to have the patience required to sit with it, but old enough that I retained enough small bits and pieces of it, that I could recall upon a second viewing when I was in my early 20s.
Blade Runner isn’t a bad movie—looking at it through an intersectional lens makes a lot of it extremely troubling, though, and I think more than anything else—and I feel this way about a lot of films, but I find that I am more attracted to, or interested in the mythology surrounding the making of the film, and the legacy it has had, rather than the actual film itself.
And if you are to think about Blade Runner, certainly a number of different elements of the film come to mind, like the meticulous and now iconic attention to detail in the set design, or the infamous and moving “Tears In The Rain” monologue given near the end of the film.
Beauty Pill’s second full-length, released nearly a decade after The Unsustainable Lifestyle, opens with a reference to Blade Runner.
In the film, the antagonist Roy Batty—a replicant, comes face to face with his creator, Eldon Tyrell, CEO of the Tyrell corporation and the individual responsible for the creation of the replicants, and for giving them a four-year lifespan, which Batty is very quickly coming to the end of.
There are, of course, several different versions, or “cuts” of Blade Runner—the “final cut” of the film was released in 2007 as part of its 25th anniversary, and the “director’s cut” in 1992, released a decade after the film’s original theatrical run, makes several changes to things that Ridley Scott had been unhappy with and ultimately had little if any control over after completing the film.
One of the things that is altered between versions is a subtle, but important detail in a short line of dialogue spoken by actor Rutger Hauer, as Roy Batty, when he confronts his creator. “I want more life, fucker,” he hisses—giving his motivation within the scene more of a sense of both menace, and desperation.
In “The Final Cut,” the line has been dubbed, altered so that as he approaches Tyrell, Batty whispers, “I want more life, father,” which, even in just watching the two versions of this scene online, removed from the context of the film as a whole, it does change the tone of this moment, and the character’s intent and motivation, quite a bit.
Beauty Pill’s second full-length, released nearly a decade after The Unsustainable Lifestyle, opens with a reference to Blade Runner.
On the kaleidoscopic, disorienting, and rollicking “Drapetomania!,” the opening track on Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are, the first words you hear Clark say are, “I want more life, fucker.”
Even outside of the stream of conscious, idiosyncratic screed of imagery and allusions that Clark then begins reciting as the instrumentation writhes and shifts underneath him, given the fact that he did undergo open heart surgery less than a decade prior, and becoming even more keenly aware of his own fragility and mortality, it is fitting that the first line of the first track on Beauty Pill’s return would be a sneering demand for “more life.”
By the time Describes Things As They Are arrived in 2015, the band’s earlier material was not yet given the critical reassessment it rightfully was owed, but this new album was met with a much warmer and well-regarded reception from music writers and listeners—bestowed with a 7.5 out of 10 from Pitchfork, and named one of the 50 best albums of the year from National Public Radio, while “Rolling Stone” curiously gave it the backhanded compliment of placing it amongst the list of the “best albums you didn’t hear in 2015.”
It’s not as if it was created by an entirely different band, but rather, one with a new sense of purpose, and a kind of true artistic freedom and fearlessness that courses through each song.
Describes Things As They Are, released initially on Butterscotch Records, was recorded as part of a museum installation piece called “Immersive Ideal.” The band worked in a space set up at Artisphere, located in Arlington, Virginia, and the sessions themselves were open for the public to view, with the goal of completing one song for the record each day while they were in the space.
The brief Wikipedia entry about the album states that Clark felt the pressure of the recording process infused this collection of songs with an energetic quality—and there is an inherent sense of immediacy, or urgency, to the songs featured on Describes. They are, at times, on the verge of becoming entirely too chaotic, or that there is just too much happening within a track, with the band then seemingly doing everything they can to retain some sense of control.
Clark spoke of a pressure during the recording process, but the quote does not elaborate on where that pressure was coming from—the experimental and immersive way with which the band recorded the album, or was it the internal pressure he felt upon his decision to return to music?
*
It goes without saying if you’ve spent any time at all with Describes Things As They Are, and it might be an understatement to call it a densely textured album. I think, initially, when I first began listening to it earlier in the year after the release of the Blue Period anthology, I felt it was, perhaps, a little inaccessible—but the more time I have spent with it, I’ve realized that isn’t the case.
It’s not inaccessible. It’s just extremely intimidating.
And it’s intimidating because there is just so goddamn much happening in literally every song that it constantly runs the risk of collapsing in on the weight of itself, or buckling under the heft of its own enormous ambitions, but it never does—it can, however, get a little lost within itself temporarily before finding its way back out.
Following Clark’s open heart surgery, he found he was struggling to lift and comfortably hold a guitar, which is Describes Things As They Are relies so heavily on so many electronic elements in each track, and the inclusion of these electronic elements (keyboards, drum programming, samples, etc.) gives the album a much more playful, or at times, whimsical and freewheeling kind of energy. There might have been tension, or a real sense of pressure in the recording of the album, but that pressure then ultimately was filtered into an at times jittery, at times very dissonant, regularly esoteric collection of razor-sharp pop songs—strong, dizzying rhythms, surprisingly infectious melodies, unconventional arranging, and at times a biting or scathing social commentary found in Clark’s lyricism.
There is nothing intentionally “funny” about Describes, but there is a kind of humor, at times, to these arrangements—I can call it playful or whimsical or jaunty or rollicking, but it doesn’t really describe the robustness in sound, and how there so many dazzling elements swirling around together to create something that is wholly unique in how the end result sounds—it is an album that deep down does take itself rather seriously for the most part, but cannot help but impress the listener with an unexpected feeling of fun.
And in that fun, or that sense of humor, or whimsy, or playfulness, or whatever you want to call it, what I think I appreciate the most about Describes Things As They Are is that even if you think it’s going to teeter into something entirely too silly3 or too novel sounding, it never does—and at least for me, as a listener, I am relieved that Clark is able to walk that line with an intelligence and grace.
The Record Store Day reissue of Describes Things As They Are spreads the album’s 11 tracks across three sides of a double LP—the fourth side, similarly to Blue Period, contains ephemeral material4 from this era of the group. The album itself is not front-loaded with its best, or most genuinely interesting tracks (the album is quite interesting throughout), but the first side of the record is a flawless three-song run that guides you into the blindingly bright (musically speaking, anyway) world that Clark and this iteration of Beauty Pill have created that truly does never cease in its momentum.
“Drapetomania!,” as the first thing you hear on the record, really does its job w/r/t setting a tone for what the rest of Describes Things As They Are is going to sound like—it’s colorful, complex, and heavily rhythmic. While the rest of the instruments in the song are beginning to find their place before the song actually “begins,” there is a warbled, scratching sound that courses from side to side, reminiscent of a DJ working the crossfader on a deck of turntables. The inclusion of this sound, especially within the first few seconds as the song is just finding its footing, indicates to the listener that Describes, sonically, will have little in common with the group’s first full-length.
There is a rich and crisp feeling to the production value of Describes—you can hear that right away as well once all of the instruments file in on “Drapetomania!,” as the percussion shuffles and ricochets through the mix, and very catchy melodies dance around one another coming from the short, shimmery electric guitar riff, and a wonky, spirited keyboard progression.
Clark’s lyrics, his voice just a little raspier with age, coming nearly a decade after The Unsustainable Lifestyle, arrives, demanding more life—the rest of his lyrics, then, tumble and spill very deliberately, with intentional pauses and stretches of syllables, so they hit the ground, and their impact is in just the right place within the cacophony underneath him—writing that, honestly, can be hard to follow in terms of the references, or people, that Clark mentions, including Natalya Estemirova, a Russian human rights activist assassinated in 2009, American Indian tribes located in Oklahoma, and obscure Warner Brothers cartoon characters.
Perhaps the most interesting individual referenced in “Drapetomania!”—the word, itself, an alleged mental illness that was hypothesized in 1851 as the cause of enslaved people fleeing captivity, or, later in 1914, as the “insane impulsion to wander”—is a neighbor of Clark’s. “The neighbor’s wi-fi is called ‘Magical Negro’ now,,” Clark mutters in the second verse. “I’m gonna burn his house down, if I may.”
While the idea or topic of race played a smaller role in The Unsustainable Lifestyle, race, and culture are a much more substantial part of Describes Things As They Are—Clark writes about them again in “Afrikaner Barista,” which is one of the album’s most rhythmically strong tracks—on par with “Ain’t A Jury In The World Con Convict You, Baby,” which arrives closer to the halfway point, and the shuffling, breezy “For Pretend,” which is placed within the final third.
“Afrikaner Barista,” musically, slithers and pulsates through the inclusion of additional layers of percussive elements, allowing an infectious groove and melody to be tucked firmly into the center of all of the extra clanking and clattering that occurs in the song.
Clark often, both in the past, and throughout Describes Things, writes from a place of ambiguity or abstraction—he only taps into something that is inherently less dressed up in metaphor and more personally revealing occasionally. “Afrikaner” is not exactly a personal song, but he’s writing from a place that is less abstract, which allows him to paint a genuinely interesting portrait through observation—lingering enough on the titular barista to imply he had, at the time, a fondness for her.
“Here again with the rush of revenants who need to get amphetamized,” Clark begins, allowing eight instances of “here again” to roll off his tongue and directly into the pulsating rhythm. “Some mistake you for Australian, and you correct the ones you like.”
“Afrikaner” is apparently a description specifically for Dutch-descended people from South Africa—“The wit is closely calibrated to summon out a blushing smile,” Clark continues in the second verse. “I know exactly where you’re from—but I wanna be the one you like.”
The first side of Describes Things closes out with the appearance of “Ann The Word”—the song originally recorded in the mid-2000s and shared via the group’s MySpace, and around the time of Clark’s first heart surgery. And prior to it finding its place within the track list for this album, released on its own, it was a dramatic departure for the Beauty Pill sound because it strayed so far away from the standard guitar-driven sound of The Unsustainable Lifestyle—stretching to nearly seven minutes in length, it also unfolds at somewhat slowly—not at a glacial pace, but much more deliberate and restrained.
The history of the song, and where it lands in the band’s development, is not imperative to the appreciation of it here within the album’s first third, or even to the understanding of Describes Things from start to finish as a real piece of art, but the compelling backstory to its creation, and the events surrounding it, do make a fascinating aside for the listener—the song is certainly not as dizzying or chaotic in terms of its tempo and use of rhythm and tempo as quite a few of the other tracks on the album end up being, but the experimental nature of its orchestration does not sound out place here at all.
The title, “Ann The Word,” comes from a reference to both a historical figure, Ann Lee, and to a song by the group Lungfish—who were, throughout the 1990s, also signed to Dischord along with Clark (an interpretation of Lungfish’s “Ann The Word” appears as an epilogue to Describes Things As They Are.)
Ann Lee was a founding leader in the religious group known as the Shakers during the 1700s, preaching publicly and leading the church when there were few female religious leaders.
Lyrically, though, there is little to do with a religious movement from the 1700s in “Ann The Word”—with vocals from Jean Cook, who was brought on following the departure of Rachel Burke as the band’s lineup shifted over the decade in between albums—takes a much more fragmented, poetic approach to its narrative, both unfolding like, and literally describing within the song itself, a dream.
Not a bad one, not a good one either—but just a series of unsettling, vivid pieces, woven together by the gentle, layered sonic textures playing out underneath.
“In the dream, the car fills up with water, and you and I are kissing just the same,” Cook begins, slowly. “There’s no panic to close the windows—there’s no panic and no shame.”
“The sea, the frost, we’re good and lost, but not shivering,” Cook continues as the song wanders into its chorus. “And you turn to me, and whisper, ‘You and me—we’re fucked, we’re free.’ If we call it fate, it’s already too late.”
That kind of eerie, creeping feeling within the writing on Describes Things As They Are appears again in “Steven and Tiwonge,” where Clark depicts a very emergent, seemingly dangerous situation he finds himself in with another person, though the reason they find themselves in this sudden and impending danger is never explained—honestly, a very effective trick in terms of just tossing the listener into this heightened narrative with no exposition provided.
“Slide the bureau against the door,” he states at the top of each verse. “Buys us thirty seconds or so. Leave the locket on the nightstand, then out the window. A quick scurry down the fire escape—then I go left, and you go right. There’s no time for goodbye tonight.”
*
Something that surprised me, in sitting down with Describes Things As They Are with the intent of analytical listening, was the somewhat inward or at least much more solemn tone it shifts into after the halfway mark, specifically “The Prize,” and the macabrely titled “Dog With Rabbit in Mouth, Unharmed.”
Beginning with drum programming that sounds like it has been compressed down into oblivion, shuddering and skittering out a rhythm, a live drum kit arrives soon thereafter and follows along in time, along with a low, rumbling bass line that reverberates through the clattering that surrounds it, and is joined by a minimalistic sounding strum of the electric guitar, and a sweeping, though restrained string accompaniment which gives “The Prize” an added layer of theatricality to it, and all of the elements just kind of tumbling together so gently like this make it a surprisingly poignant in sound and rather beautiful moment that stands out among the others on Describes.
Similarly to the song’s affect as a whole, there is a quietness to the way Clark begins with the introspective lyrics—not exactly a whisper, but he never rises above the kind of hushed level he uses early on in the song; and the lyrics are not his own, which is worth noting. “The Prize” is a cover originally written and performed by Arto Lindsay, an experimental performer with whom Clark has worked within a number of capacities in the past.
“When did I empty my empty mind,” the opening line of the song asks. “Did you see me let go of myself? Before I lose sight of that picture of you, better place it face down on the bed.”
Clark might not have penned it, but “The Prize,” in this arrangement, works well within the context of the album, because, like so many other pieces across Describes, as well as on the tracks included in Blue Period, the words are coming from within a kind of poetic, or highly literate ambiguity.
There is a sense of heartbreak, certainly, but the way it is unpacked it makes it all the more compelling because there is just this hint of mystery or curiosity about it all to work through as the listener. “In our dollhouse, the furniture’s capsized,” Clark continues in the final verse. “Rushing and stalling in our disbelief, folded back into our own surprise.”
And even with a track that does work from this place of melancholic restraint, and even with as fond of the kind of intellectual and often challenging arrangement or approach to songwriting that Clark has taken, especially on Describes Things As They Are, there is an element to “The Prize”’s chorus that is so catchy, the way it just rolls gently and then coasts through your ears—“Rub words away, roll back in the shade,” Clark asks of us, before adding, “Violent, and hectic, and wise.”
The title itself is unsettling5, though the inclusion of the word “unharmed” does make me feel slightly better about “Dog With Rabbit in Mouth, Unharmed,” which, like “The Prize,” is constructed from a kind of quiet and reserve when compared to other places within the record that sound like they are on the verge of spiraling completely out of control, sonically speaking—and like “The Prize,” it is one of the few songs where Beauty Pill includes an acoustic guitar within the song’s instrumentation.
Here, on “Dog,” it is strummed delicately with a certain kind of majesty to it that gives it a swirling, autumnal sensation—like the song is a cool breeze that has just picked up and is whooshing past you with its rolling, brushed percussion, and, like the seemingly Japanese inspired melody and tone that appears in “Ann The Word,” there is a similar sounding element that offers up a little bit of dissonance within the chorus—a little buried underneath all of the other atmospheric, synthetic noises that are oscillating or whirring in different portions of the song.
In its gentle nature, with just the slightest edge of friction, “Dog With Rabbit in Mouth, Unharmed”’s arranging creates a space that is complimentary of its seemingly personal, thoughtful, and certainly bittersweet lyrics. With Cook taking over the role of lead vocals, she slowly and beautifully lets her voice and this narrative float through it all.
Opening with reference to a Neo-classical painter from the first part of the 1900s, as well as what I would call a “ten dollar word” used to describe the earliest light from the sun in the morning, the song takes a turn further inward. “The vet is Chinese and lovely,” Cook states very matter-of-factly. “Her ‘There’s nothing more we can do’ face is very kind—she’ll show you today.”
And what offsets the gentle, or delicate nature with which the song unfolds is the sobering reflection of the short, direct chorus: “You don’t have to look to see…see what time is doing to me.”
The final half of Describes Things As They Are is not entirely an inward, or solemn turn—Clark, and the stable of performers on the record steer things back into the more explosive, or at least rhythmic and writhing territory as the album really reaches its last few moments—of those, the lively and shuffling “For Pretend” is the most fascinating in both its unique arranging, and its lyricism.
“For Pretend” is among the album’s most jaunty, or inherently bright sounding—thanks to the layers, and layers of stuttering, chopped up, percussive elements seethe and spin around. Is it the vibraphone, an instrument that is among the credits of percussionist Abram Goodrich in the album’s liner notes? It sounds like it could be a steel drum, and, honestly, ping-ponging endlessly off of itself—or is it a heavily processed pluck of a note on the guitar, reverberating in a skitter? Regardless of what instruments are making these sounds, or how they are being made at all, it is easy to lose yourself in the dizzying nature of it all—giving into the undeniable groove “For Pretend” has, and like any well-put-together pop song, Clark can distract with the song’s arranging from how dark, then self-effacing, his writing is.
“That man is an actor, sweetheart,” he begins in an assuring tone. “He’s not that mean in real life. He would never hurt his real wife,” he continues. “When the movie’s over, everything is all right.”
Later, in the second verse, the lyrics continue in their juxtaposition between what is “real” and what isn’t—“That woman’s an actor, sweetheart. She’s only screaming for pretend—she will be okay in the end. Tears are years of practice, and the blood is a synthetic blend: just syrups dyed red.”
One of the many surprising elements of “For Pretend” is the “sweetheart” Clark is addressing—at first, it is someone who is apparently five years old; then, by the end of the second verse, they have turned ten. By the end of the song, when Clark turns the description of an actor on himself—or at least the role of the protagonist within the song, the off-stage person being addressed has turned 15, and is old enough to “get it”—the “it,” here, being something rather bleak.
“I am an actor, sweetheart—I obey the needs of the scene,” he croons. “Every gesture’s for the screen. I play an addict trying hard to stay clean.”
The chorus, then, gives a little more context to the idea of this character and their history with implied addiction. “I’m not a prevaricating junkie asshole,” Clark explains. “I’m just researching the part—method all the way, full commitment. And you have suffered for my art—it’s hard to stop once you start.”
*
Something that I often do, and perhaps part of it is brought on by nostalgia, but I have, for several years now, when introduced to an album that had been originally released many years prior, but I am hearing now, for the first time, I think about where I was, and in many cases, who I was, during the year the album had arrived.
If I had heard about, or been aware of, Beauty Pill in 2004, would I have purchased The Unsustainable Lifestyle from the patchouli-scented walls of Moondog Music in Dubuque, Iowa, when I was in my junior or senior years in college?
And I wonder, in these circumstances, that if I had been aware of Beauty Pill in 2004, when I was 20, or 21 years old, if they would have been a band that I would have been drawn to, or interested in; I wonder if The Unsustainable Lifestyle would have been an album that, nearly 20 years ago, I would have been in a place where I could appreciate, or understand it, in the way that it needs to be understood and appreciated.
Or, if it is something that just happened, as music has throughout my life, found me at exactly the right time.
I have, in the past, written about when I have had to approach an album, or an artist, a number of times at various points in my life, with the effort, or intent, to be able to make a connection, and for that album to finally resonate in some way. Sometimes that connection is ultimately never made, and I am just not able to find the right way, or arrive at the right time, for that connection to be made, despite whatever efforts I am putting in.
Sometimes it takes a year. Sometimes it takes a decade.
Sometimes it takes more than one attempt at different times, years and years apart, for things to finally, for lack of a better description, “click.”
The music finding me, at first, at the wrong time, or a time when I was, as I have put it before when trying to articulate it, just “not ready” for it—and in these cases, my hope is that I find inevitably can find my way to it when the time is, for whatever reason, right.
These questions I have asked of my past self regarding The Unsustainable Lifestyle could also be asked of Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are—released, per the date on Spotify, in April 2015, which was a time when describing myself as “not doing well” would be underselling how poorly things were going for me w/r/t my mental health.
My wife and I had, unexpectedly, faced a loss two months prior, and I was being consumed—close to drowning, really—in grief, and from stress brought on by a job that I was not exactly thriving at.
I’ve tried to forget, or at least bury a lot surrounding that time, but it was the fragilest things had felt for a while—I can at least acknowledge that, and I think my enjoyment of music, and any genuine enthusiasm or interest I had in writing about it, was difficult if not impossible to muster.
How would I have received Describes Things As They Are if I had read about it while slinking further and further down into the chair in my cubicle in the newsroom, and sinking further and further down into a deep, dark, depression that would take years to claw my way out of.
I am sure that, since the beginning of the year, I am not the only new and enthusiastic listener6 of Beauty Pill who came to discover the band through the release of Blue Period—the first pressing of the collection more or less sold out before its official release date, with a second edition already also close to selling out through the group’s Bandcamp site.
And with discovering a group so many years after the fact, and then throwing myself head first into their entire body of work the way I have here, one can feel a little bit like they’ve simply hopped onto a bandwagon in comparison to those who had discovered the group in the past, however far back you want to go—I think I have mostly just tried, since January, to be grateful that I was introduced to Beauty Pill at all.
After spending so much time with both Blue Period and Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are, I can see how as a listener, someone might be more interested or attracted to one over the other—the former is more or less a relatively straightforward, guitar-focused “indie rock” album that does not stray too far off course; the latter is, of course, much more complicated and dense in its arranging and it asks a lot more of the person who is listening.
There is not a night and day difference between the two—not really, just two opposite ends of the creative mind of Chad Clark and the members of the band who were involved in the recording of both—you can hear where those opposite ends do, kind of, converge with one another on each release, but both records do operate primarily from these extremes. And even in, perhaps, favoring one over the other album, I have reached the point where I do really require both—not back to back in listening, but equally and regularly returning to each of them depending on which direction I am feeling pulled in at the moment.
I will admit that the dissonance, or the “edge,” or whatever you want to call it in Describes Things As They Are, and the cacophony that surges throughout a bulk of the album, made it a little more challenging to access at first—almost keeping the listener (me, in this case) at a little bit of an arm’s length, before it eventually opens up and lets you in more.
Clark’s writing in Beauty Pill is never self-aware enough that it breaks the fourth wall, but there Describes Things As They Are, where, in the song “Exit Without Saving,” he sings, “You recognize that this is noise, right? You still want it.” The song itself, lyrically, is similar to a number of other moments on the album, where it is written from a place of vague, hyper-literate, evocative fragments that often have a bit of a mischievous smirk to them—the smirk, though, in the chorus, also comes with a slow turn toward the audience and a bit of a wink.
You recognize that this is noise, right?
The answer is yes, of course, but even in the moments of dissonance of where the band’s arranging runs the risk of collapsing in on itself and its enormous ambitions and myriad layers, Beauty Pill has made music that is more compelling and fearless than a lot of “indie rock” being made today, and there is a humanity and a poignancy about the both Blue Period and Describes Things As They Are that I have been unable to shake, and probably will never be able to.
I recognize that it is noise. I still want it.
1- For at least the last four years, maybe even longer, I have removed the word “crazy” from my vocabulary, and have been a little confrontational, if not very vocal, with others about the casual usage of it in conversation as a descriptor for something or someone. I understand that the sensitivity and awareness over an ableist slur was, like, not something people were thinking about in the mid-1990s, so it does bother me a little that this is the band’s name.
2- I had several issues with the Pitchfork review of Blue Period, including the writer’s apparent comfort (he is a white man) with quoting (and not partially censoring) Clark’s use of the “n-word” from “Won't You Be Mine.” The review also does not attempt to even apologize or atone for the original write-up that The Unsustainable Lifestyle was given in 2004.
3- It seemed entirely too difficult to try and explain this within the piece itself, especially with how long I knew it was going to end up being in the end, but I do have this problem with, like, music that doesn’t take itself entirely seriously, which was something that kept me from liking the band Self—a product of the 1990s, the group put out a few records before kind of folding or at least becoming more dormant throughout the latter half of the 2000s, before a reunion of sorts with an EP of new material, and a few reissues. The point here is that Self is very silly at times—the songs can often be jokey, and even the arranging can be a little too whimsical. The opening notes of “Drapetomania!” reminded me slightly of Self at first, but the longer I sat with Describes Things, the more I kind of came around to understand how the whimsy is used to offset the kind of harshness of some of the references and lyrics, rather than Self, which is just whimsy for the sake of a laugh.
4- I realized as I was writing more and more about each of these reissues, the further along I got, the piece was getting a little too long, and there was no way I was going to shoehorn in anything about the extra tracks included on each album. There are only a few on the reissue for Describes Things—two of them are alternate versions of “Ann The Word,” and then there are obviously a lot more included on the entire fourth side as well as some of the third side to Blue Period—some tracks are of legitimate interest, but are not, like, integral to an understanding of the record.
5-This is just an aside to mention that it is honestly super difficult at times, as an ethical vegan, to consume media—I have abandoned books because cruelty or neglect of an animal has been used as a plot device, and I refuse to watch certain movies for similar reasons. As someone who lived with rabbits for eight years, the song's title is kind of upsetting, but only kind of. I guess. The word unharmed does honestly make or break it.
6- By the time I got to this point, I was uncertain where to add this in, but I do know that Beauty Pill has more or less remained active since the release of Describes, and has issued like one or two EPs during the last three years, but I think that these reissues—specifically the reissue of Blue Period has generated such a new interesting the band that it helped kind kickstart Clark’s work on a third full length.
A second pressing of Blue Period is out now via Ernest Jennings; the Record Store Day reissue of Describes Things As They Are is available through resellers on Discogs.
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