Exit Without Saving: An Interview With Chad Clark of Beauty Pill (Part I)

On the tenth anniversary of his latest record and (soon, he swears) their return

Beauty Pill, as they are (Photo by Brian Libby)

Ten years ago, Chad Clark’s brainy, amorphous, genre-resistant outfit Beauty Pill released Beauty Pill Describes Things as They Are, an opus recognized from NPR to Robert Christgau as one of 2015’s best records — and at last freeing Clark from the hermetic expectations of his native D.C. punk scene. His career as a studio marvel has plenty to be proud of; my faves include production on three life-changing Dismemberment Plan LPs (including the classic Emergency & I), mastering Fugazi’s final testament The Argument, and more recently helping engineer Sadie “Sad13” Dupuis’ wonderful 2017 solo bow Slugger.

He’s worked with countless names in chewy D.C. post-punk and fronted his own cult concern Smart Went Crazy (another of his gifts is for band names) before conceiving Beauty Pill in the 2000s as a revolving-vocalist quorum à la Massive Attack. But after unencouraging reviews for 2004’s The Unsustainable Lifestyle and, uh, brushes with death (Clark is on his third heart as of 2023, thanks to the horrifying domino effects of cardiomyopathy), his band’s return was greeted with equally unexpected hosannas, including Time naming Beauty Pill Describes Things as They Are one of the ten best records of the 2010s, slotted between Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé.

Beauty Pill has been active since this resurgence, dropping the EPs Please Advise and Instant Night (which reference Miles Davis and Donald Trump respectively), along with Sorry You’re Here (their score to the play suicide.chat.room), and well-received reissue Blue Period (which challenged a different generation to hear the band’s 2000s output as it was intended). But as we rounded a decade since Describes Things last month, they still have not released a proper album following it up.

That’s about to change. The third proper Beauty Pill album is being mixed. Among the things I’ll leave it to a publicist to reveal when it’s time are the album title (which is very Beauty Pill), the esteemed label it sure looks like they’re signing with, and at least one highly regarded guest musician. I am permitted to reiterate that no-wave/avant-samba legend Arto Lindsay produced the thing, which excites the shit out of me since both acts were spectacular (and made sense) when I caught their tour together.

It’s to Chad’s credit as a raconteur, theoretician, and analyst of his own innovative repertoire that a conversation with him reflecting on the tenth anniversary of Describes and previewing the upcoming record still reads like no stone left unturned or factoid withheld. Below is RIOTRIOT’s chat with Clark via phone, which touched on everything from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to Black Mirror.

So you basically put out one album per decade…

[Laughs.] I really…I gotta tell you, I hate that. I hate it, man. I hate that that's true and I hate that that's my reputation. But they're good albums, goddamn.

Yeah, not necessarily a bad thing. Lucinda Williams kind of started out that way and it helped build some mystique.

I’m not doing it on purpose. It's what happens. Me and Devin [Ocampo, drummer] were just talking about that the other night. I hate that I have cultivated this reputation for perfectionism. I don't self-regard as a perfectionist. It's not cool to me. Perfectionism is not cool. And I know a lot of people view me as a perfectionist. I know Ian MacKaye views me as a perfectionist, which is a drag. But you know, there's not much I can do to defend against it, you know? It does look like I'm obsessive. I understand why people view me that way. This record that I'm working on, that I'm finishing right now, I abandoned it for long periods of time. It's not like we’re working on it constantly. Now you could say that the abandonment is a function of perfectionism, too, which would be fair. People have good reason to suspect that I'm a perfectionist. Some people say it fits me, like it’s a compliment. [Laughs.] It's not cool to me. I don't love that I've cultivated that rep. But what are you going to do?