Formed in the dawning of the 21st century, Washington, DC’s Beauty Pill is still an active entity, with singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Chad Clark presiding as the sole constant member. The unit’s output from 2003-2005, consisting of a full-length and an EP, was formerly issued only on CD, but remedying this omission of format is the Ernest Jenning Record Co.’s Blue Period, which is out January 20 on 140 gram double vinyl housed in a foil stamped gatefold jacket, remastered, and complete with a full side of unreleased tracks and demos.
Before there was Beauty Pill, there was Smart Went Crazy, who released two strong albums, Now We’re Even (1996) and Con Art (’97) on Dischord as part of that label’s fertile ’90s run, placing them on the later end of a trajectory that includes Fugazi, Lungfish, The Nation of Ulysses, Slant 6, Circus Lupus, Jawbox, Shudder to Think, Hoover, The Crown Hate Ruin, The Make-Up, and The Warmers. However, Smart Went Crazy did stand a bit apart from their contemporaries, in part through the cello of Hilary Soldati. Additionally, the songwriting was far from the standard post-hardcore.
These facets and more meant Smart Went Crazy didn’t attract the largest of followings while extant, a circumstance pertinent here, as Blue Period documents an era of struggle for Clark’s subsequent outfit (more related to critical antipathy than audience apathy), with Beauty Pill initially a core trio featuring Abram Goodrich (from Smart Went Crazy) and Joanne Gholl. They released “The Cigarette Girl From the Future” EP on CD in 2001 via Dischord, the release not included on Blue Period partly because it’s already been reissued (and expanded to a full LP) on vinyl in 2015 by Butterscotch Records.
But Blue Period also captures Beauty Pill as a core quintet of Rachel Burke (voice and Wurlitzer), Ryan Nelson (drums, voice, guitar, bass), Drew Doucette (guitar, percussion, bass, keyboards, treatments), Basla Andolsun (bass), and Clark (voice, guitar, Hammond, piano, bass, treatments), as heard on The Unsustainable Lifestyle, released in 2003, also on Dischord.
It’s a boundary stretching record, essentially leaving the usefulness of the post-hardcore tag behind, and if still categorizable as indie rock (see the standout “Lifeguard in Wintertime”), the album maintains a heavy nature and wields an edge, occasional experimental, that stood out in an era when scads of indie acts were “maturing” and softening their sounds. Not that gentleness isn’t part of the spectrum on The Unsustainable Lifestyle (e.g. “Prison Song”), it just never registers as a strategic template.
This relates to the restlessness of mood and the breadth of textures across the album’s dozen songs, where the lead vocals alternate by gender (Burke and Clark, mostly) and the style-inflections range from skewed pop melodicism to judiciously applied aspects of humor (“Won’t You Be Mine”) to more straight ahead rockers (“Such Large Portions!,” at least until the abstract hijinks at the end) to subtle math-rock angles and post-rock undercurrents, though perhaps it suffices to say that Beauty Pill were transitioning into the art-rock band that thrived on later releases (after a long hiatus).
But even with its restless and experimental moments and the gravitation toward art-rock, The Unsustainable Lifestyle still sounds fully formed, as does the 5-song follow-up EP “You Are Right to Be Afraid.” With no major departures in evidence, the EP does connect as more stripped down (there’s a lack of credited guest musicians on this one), with the title track Blue Period’s hardest rocking song. Another highlight is the alternate version of “Quote Devout Unquote” (one of Blue Period’s strongest cuts), plus more humor, and right away in the short opening piece “The Ballad of Leron and Lele.”
Beauty Pill’s era’s aren’t so rigidly defined. Goodrich and Gholl are amongst the contributors to The Unsustainable Lifestyle, as is ex-Smart Went Crazy drummer and future full-on Beauty Pill member right up to right now, Devin Ocampo. Those who discovered Beauty Pill through 2015’s excellent Describes Things as They Are will recognize that band in these more rock oriented endeavors. The bonus tracks, including a wild transformation of Hendrix’s “I Don’t Live Today,” round out this worthy reissue quite nicely.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
