There are two tracks titled "Ann the Word" on Beauty Pill Describes Things as They Are, the first album by Beauty Pill in 11 years. The difference between the two speaks volumes. The first "Ann the Word" is an original composition by Beauty Pill’s creative leader and core member, singer/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chad Clark; it features Clark’s longtime Beauty Pill partner Jean Cook on ghostly lead vocals as a shamisen is plucked, jōruri-style, in the background, accompanied by prickly dissonant and haywire electronics. The second "Ann the Word" is a cover of a song by Lungfish, a group that was Clark’s labelmate back when he fronted the Dischord Records outfit Smart Went Crazy in the late '90s; here, the primordial dread of the original is scooped out, and the void is filled with sample-heavy layering. After Clark chants Daniel Higgs’ eschatological poetry, Cook comes in at the end and gets angelic, repeating, "The world vanished in a gentle breeze."
In recent years, Clark himself almost met his end, and not so gently. In 2007 he was diagnosed with a viral heart ailment that he battled, off and on, for the next few years—up to and including multiple open-heart surgeries. For months on end, he didn’t have the strength to play the guitar. His struggles put the brakes on Beauty Pill, whose lone full-length for Dischord, 2004’s The Unsustainable Lifestyle, continued in the art-pop direction that Clark had established in Smart Went Crazy—with muddled results. But in 2006, Clark began exploring a new direction for Pill with a demo of "Ann the Word" (his song, not the cover), which broke from guitar-bass-drums to probe the freer domain of laptop arrangement, electro-acoustics, and samples.
On D**escribes Things as They Are, he finally fulfills the promise of this direction, which proves fruitful and wise. The album is a smorgasbord of angles, melodies, loops, pockets, and fractal surfaces that nonetheless refuse to deviate from Clark’s longstanding bailiwick: the mythic power of the pop hook. He loves to unfold his songs as if they’re some kind of four-dimensional puzzle; "Ain’t a Jury in the World Gon Convict You Baby" launches on an almost industrially severe beat before the organic squish of drones and symphonic surges trickle in. It’s a big-screen anthem that addresses nationalism in a cultural climate of paranoia and recrimination, but it also packs scads of auditory information into a streamlined slither. Rather than milk his life-threatening illness for all of its lyrical worth, Clark uses it here more as a catalyst than source of raw material. In fact, in the few instances where he does address his illness—as on "Near Miss Stories", where he sings breezily over disembodied guitar, "Stethoscope on my chest, he says we better do this fast/ One of these beats of your heart is gonna be the last"—he speaks through hints and distances, and even a punch line: "The surgeon once practiced on a blood orange in an art class."
Clark performs his own kind of surgery all over Describes Things as They Are, which is filled with punchy, brassy scrambles of samples and skittering drums. *"*Drapetomania" sounds like Art of Noise spliced with New Jack Swing. But for every manic experiment there is a pulsing, pretty, pop collage like "Dog with Rabbit in Mouth Unharmed". Clark’s postmodern pedigree shows on "For Pretend", a clatter of percussion and pinging guitar that also sports one of Clark’s most arresting melodies. If there is a drawback to Describes, it is that a few songs rely a little too heavily on Beauty Pill’s limited back of sonic tricks, whose impact dims slightly after prolonged exposure.
"Ann the Word" isn’t the only cover song on Describes Things as They Are. Clark and crew also offer a rendition of Arto Lindsay’s "The Prize"—only in this case, it’s highly faithful, right down to the muscular beat, lush strings, and faint brushes of Tropicália. Compare this reverent cover to his radically deconstructed take on Lungfish, the album's only visible link to Clark's past, and you can see where Clark's inclinations lie. In "Exit Without Saving", he sings, with taunting sweetness, "You recognize that this is noise, right?/ You still want it?" Clark had to wait over a decade to offer us his vision for what Beauty Pill could be, and he poses this question on Describes Things as They Are with delicacy and daring. The restless, breathless music makes clear that whatever the answer might be, he's not waiting around for it.
