Washington DC’s Beauty Pill have announced the forthcoming release of their new album Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are. The album is being released by Butterscotch Records on April 21. The band have also revealed the first track from the album, “Dog With Rabbit In Mouth, Unharmed” via Ad Hoc earlier today who said the song is “defined by lush ambience, almost feeling like a geography you slip through more than a song you listen to.”
LISTEN to “Dog With Rabbit In Mouth, Unharmed”
In recording Beauty Pill Describe Things As They Are band-leader Chad Clark notes that he wants listeners to feel like they are “inside the songs,” a quality that was born out of the unusual environment that Beauty Pill chose to record the bulk of this album. For two weeks, they participated in “Immersive Ideal,” a special commissioned project for Artisphere, a Washington, DC arts center that allowed visitors to observe the band at work creating the album. People were able to watch the band through a pane of glass. The band’s recording process became an art exhibit unto itself (an idea now being explored by PJ Harvey, coincidentally an artist Clark admires greatly). It was an exercise in radical transparency; a way to pull back the curtain on a process that can seem mysterious to your average listener.
Besides Clark the band’s current lineup is a uniquely diverse collective that includes Basla Andolun, Jean Cook, Drew Doucette and Devin Ocampo.
After over a decade releasing critically acclaimed recordings (The New York Times and The Washington Post have raved, and Pitchfork gave their debut EP a 9/10), Beauty Pill amicably parted ways with Dischord Records in 2014 in pursuit of their evolving artistic interests. Their new work, as well as some expanded re-issues, will now be released by Butterscotch Records.
The excitement surrounding the return of Beauty Pill is not simply because of the densely constructed and deeply felt music found on the new album. Some of that enthusiasm is being reserved for the plain fact that the band’s leader Chad Clark – who has worked in the studio with artists like The Dismemberment Plan, Fugazi and Mary Timony – is healthy and able to continue creating his own deeply personal and political music.
In 2007, Clark fell ill from a viral disease that caused his heart valves to stop connecting, thereby making the muscle enlarge. It was as harrowing an experience as you could imagine. And now that he’s made it through two surgeries, he’s ready to throw everything into his music and his band.
Despite Clark having faced such an illness Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are isn’t an album of wallowing or worrying. Clark’s experience is certainly threaded throughout the album (the opening lyric is “I want more life, fucker,”a quote from Blade Runner), but what concerns Beauty Pill most, though, is locked right in the title of this LP. These ten original compositions and two cover tunes are musical reportage, capturing what they’re seeing and hearing around them.  This is highlighted again with the track revealed today. The death of a beloved pet becomes an exegesis on mortality  in “Dog With Rabbit In Mouth, Unharmed.”