"more life" - (Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are)

Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are

Why you'll love it: Pop music for smart people

Why you'll hate it: Lacks punch, sometimes aloof

Here's a common thought for a lot of the posts on this blog.  "This album is a bit too long.  If they had cut tracks until there were only 30-40 minutes, this would  make much more of an impact."  Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are is no exception.  Although, if there was one excuse for a low-energy experimental pop album to last over an hour, Chad Clark has it.  If not for modern medicine and some luck, he'd be dead today.

With a very real cardiovascular scare hopefully in the rear view, Clark dusts off Beauty Pill, which had been on the shelf for nearly ten years.  You wouldn't figure it from his delivery, but Clark grew out if the DC punk scene and the Discord Records label.  So let's review what we know so far - Reunion album, new lease on life, experimental pop music using modern production tools for the first time, a socially-minded songwriter... yeah, ok, I think you've earned the right to make a hour long album.

What makes Beauty Pill stand out is what also dooms them to obscurity.  It's coffeehouse volume pop, with tinges of French and Japanese influences; but twee catchiness isn't the objective here.  As a result, the music never is quite as fun as it probably leads itself on to be.  Cynicism spurts out of every lyric like beheading in a samurai film.  The words are razor sharp, but Clark's style has never been visceral.  More like a wallflower, he softly dismantles culture's mixed messages ("For Pretend"), social injustice (“Steven & Tiwonge”), and his own profession ("Exit Without Saving").  All these songs could easily be microphone swinging bangers without changing a single word.

Beauty Pill Describes... is clearly meant to be enjoyed as a "sit down and pay attention" sort of album.  It's lyrically dense, with a lot to say, and there are well layered melodies than can be picked apart with repeated plays.  I have to admit... my favorite tracks are because of hooks that just plain refuse to get boring.  "Near Miss Stories" is Clark's deepest dive into what almost was end of his life, but it's the riff bouncing from line to line in the verses that has me playing it over and over.  "Afrikaner Barista"'s weird time signatures and warped synth lines sound like a jukebox in The Black Lodge.  The only true knock I have on this album is Jean Cook's vocals.  They just don't do anything for me, and I feel her songs coincidentally meander around to no real satisfaction.

I keep going back and forth on what I think about this album.  At face value, it's no surprise to me I've never heard of this band until this year.  As a fan of Stereolab and 4 Bonjour's Parties, Beauty Pill scratches the itch for soft and classy pop music that I often get.  If not for that itch though, this band would probably drift past me like smoke.  It's another one of those bands that I love for existing, but my appreciation for the actual product is never as enthusiastic.

"those old songs sound like they've been here forever" (Built To Spill - Untethered Moon)

Built To Spill
Untethered Moon
Why you'll love it: Positive energy.  Wild guitars

Why you'll hate it: Buncha plain white dorks

Once something is labeled "an institution", it starts to become taken for granted.  It's a term I see more commonly used as an excuse rather than a complement.  Built To Spill more than earned a reputation in the 90s.  Bands like Dinosaur Jr. nudged it, but it was Built To Spill (among others, hello Pavement) that marked a sea change from the era of Nirvana's doom & gloom into a more charming and witty dawn of indie rock.  Doug Martsch's twee lyrics met with his threatening guitar skills made for an effective bait-and-switch.  Especially in their crowning achievement, Keep It Like A Secret (1999).

Call it a poor decision, or a lack of pop inspiration, but the 2000's saw Built To Spill going in the opposite direction of what made Keep It Like Secret such a fan favorite record.  Instead, the complex noodling of Perfect For Now on (1997) became the style Built To Spill pushed into the next 15 years of records.  A direction that yield mixed results.  Ancient Melodies of The Future (2000) is a yawn of an album, and 2009's There is No Enemy is as pleasant (and uneventful) as a Sunday drive.  Only You in Reverse (2007) stands out for really pushing the limits of long adventurous songwriting.  Thanks to the instrumental talent, Built To Spill's "boring years" have been an easy pill to swallow.  Although, that "but they're an institution" excuse had started to creep in...

Doug Martsch admitted writer's block in the years after There is No Enemy, which eventually led to a breakdown between him and a long-standing rhythm section.  With a new backup band, Martsch has seemingly found the fountain of youth in Untethered Moon.  There is an undeniable kick of energy from the very start of "All Our Songs".  The pace has packed up.  The drums are louder.  The guitars once again have a stinging ring to them.  The very next song, "Living Zoo" proves that what you just heard before was no fluke.  Built To Spill is finally picking up where they left off in the late 90's!  As the intro revs up, "Living Zoo" has electricity that still gives me goosebumps on the 20th listen.  That youthful feeling goes as far back as 1994's There's Nothing Wrong With Love, with "On The Way"'s authoritative acoustic guitar stroking and "Never Be The Same"s cute as all get-out chorus baseline.

Long twisted songs still are a staple of the band.  "C.R.E.B" and "Some Other Song" represent the best of what Martsch has been composing for the last fifteen years, well accented with a heavy dose of fuzz.  The real goliaths are saved for last, though.  "So" has such an epic build.  A BTS staple often heard in the late 90's but hardly replicated in the 00's.  Finally, there's the experimental closer "When I'm Blind".  This song JUST GOES!  Six minutes of Martsch in a clumsy back-alley fistfight with his guitar.  It is the They Live of guitar solos!

All the while, Doug Martsch emanates positive charm.  The sharp wit of his early years have dulled, but there is a real enjoyable tone in his voice, and lovable dorkiness to his introspection.  A lot of people may be turned off by a band that sounds like it's fronted by Ned Flanders, but Built To Spill's... Idaho-ness juxtaposes their gritty experimental sound in a way that sets them apart from most indie acts.  There is just something more genuine to a musical act that isn't always trying to be cool.

Untethered Moon is the follow up to Keep it Like A Secret that everyone was afraid to ask for, in the presence of how good Built To Spill's previous two records have been.  It's so clear now; this is the sound Built To Spill has existed for.

"01100111 01101100 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000" (Squarepusher - Damogen Furies)

Squarepusher
Damogen Furies

why you'll love it: incredible glitchy madness

why you'll hate it: sounds like total nonsense

Too much of a good thing is very real.  For decades, Squarepusher has been serving up jazz influenced electronic music, with production and concepts far ahead of its time.  From 1995 to 1999 alone, we’re talking nearly 6 hours of instrumentals.  Many of which spit directly into the eye of ABACB pop song formatting.   Many use deafening static, or periods of silence/drone to accent that jazz trope of “the notes he’s not playing.  Every so often, a live bass guitar makes an appearance, but Squarepusher’s core sound is a mash up of Futurama’s Hypnotoad, playing a YMO LP at 77 RPM, and that one weird channel on your TV you’re not quite sure why you get.

I couldn’t be happier that this kind of music exists.  As a fan of “glitch art” in general (yes, I know how trite that sounds in 2015, but I’d be lying otherwise), Squarepusher’s aggressive outputs aim to stay one step ahead of, and against the trends of electronic music.  I anticipate every one of his releases, but the Squarepusher bulldozer of crushing machines seemingly never stops.  Those 6 hours of instrumentals have more than doubled over the past fifteen years (and that isn’t including his side projects, such as Shobaleader One).  I went into Damogen Furies with an expectation to be initially floored; but knowing it’s all just going to go into the Squarepusher vat to congeal with all of his other (mostly) similiar sounding tunes.

Damogen Furies may stick a bit longer, though, for one very good reason.  Clocking in at under 45 minutes, it’s mercifully short.  It could stand to be two tracks shorter, but some fat trimming really has come a long way to get much more repeated listens than even my favorite Squarepusher albums (Hello Everything or Feed Me Weird Things).  Having only 8 songs helps keep more tracks in your memory bank by the end of the album as well; because, believe me, Damogen Furies packs just as much shell shock as any other hard hitting Squarepusher album.  The fucking ballistic live video for “Rayc Fire 2” (wordlessly) says it all.  The construction of this song is like a high speed Rube Goldberg machine infused with a world-record breaking domino track, powered by the infamous Max Headroom cable hacker.  “Baltang Arg” is a fucking wormhole in audio form.  When I finished listening to that song, I expected to see Maggie Simpson tell me “this is indeed a disturbing universe”.  “Kontenjaz” and “Stor Eiglass” share tinges of twee melodies, but as you can tell by the song titles, Squarepusher isn’t trying to make you dance.  Any fun you have is purely coincidental.  This is art music.  Either you are drawn to it, or you aren’t.

I hate to break down a work of art to something as glib as that last sentence, but Squarepusher isn’t changing for anyone.  It’s still a whole lot of glitchy noise, which I somewhat mean as a term of endearment.  Damogen Furies, like most of Squarepusher’s vicious archive, sounds like a beatdown by gang of coked up Xerox machines.  Is that a good or bad thing?  That’s for my therapist to determine….