Beauty Pill - Blue Period

$15.00 - $35.00

Beauty Pill - Blue Period

$15.00 - $35.00

Ernest Jenning Record Co. and Beauty Pill are pleased to announce Blue Period, a double LP compilation including the band’s complete Dischord recordings from 2003-2005

Blue Period includes both of the band’s releases from this time, The Unsustainable Lifestyle LP and You Are Right To Be Afraid EP, as well as a full side of previously unreleased outtakes and demos. The release, out January 20, 2023, marks the first time this music is available on vinyl.

Blue Period is presented over two 140 gram LPs in a gorgeous foil stamped gatefold jacket featuring previously unseen band photos and stunning artwork from original designer and band member Ryan Nelson.

Beauty Pill's Chad Clark recalls:

In my 20s, the sequence of studio adventures was as follows:

Smart Went Crazy "Con Art" (1998)
Dismemberment Plan "Emergency & I" (1999)
Fugazi "The Argument" (2000)
Beauty Pill "The Cigarette Girl From The Future" (2001)
Dismemberment Plan "Change" (2002)

These were strong records, some now accorded “classic” stature. I should have recognized this as a “winning streak.” I did not recognize it.

In 2003, I found myself wanting to make more subtle, melancholic, insinuating music. I wrote a suite of songs for Beauty Pill that I felt was strong and purposeful. I wanted to make a textured, adult, three-dimensional album.

Punk in spirit and mind, if not in sound. A work of inference.

Aesthetically, The Unsustainable Lifestyle was probably the furthest away we had ventured from what people expected from our label, Dischord Records. For example, the opening song “Goodnight For Real,” was diaphanous and understated (almost ambient?), not raw and clangorous.

Anytime you run afoul of people’s expectations, you court rebuke. Rebuke came. Pitchfork bit first.

“Fans of Smart Went Crazy who just can't accept the fact that Chad Clark is capable of producing anything short of brilliance should save themselves the trauma…” is how it opens. Normally, this is the kind of square review you read and laugh, but Pitchfork’s cultural weight in our field at that time was gravitational. In the mid 2000s, Pitchfork was a tidal force. The tide had turned against us.

That dumb review affected everything. Copycat reviews ensued. It hit us directly in an economic way: booking agents turned away from booking the band. Some of my friends started saying “You should make more of a rock record next time.” (For some reason, this was the only remedy anyone suggested: Do more of what people expect. Ugh.) The consensus seemed to be we’d made a mistake and we should simply try again.

The band tried to persevere, but we had no money and ultimately morale dissolved. I didn’t know where to go from that point, but I knew I did’t want to make the rock music people told me to make. So I sank into a bleak depression and decided to keep music to myself.

I had failed. I disappeared for a decade.

In 2016, Beauty Pill would ultimately come back together and release Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are, a lush double album that was more stylistically daring, not less. Times had changed and listeners and critics were more willing to embrace the experimentation. It was a relief to be in synch with public interest as opposed to on the margins.

In promoting Describes Things, I learned that people had come to love Unsustainable Lifestyle and You Are Right To Be Afraid (its lofi companion EP). People came up to me and expressed awe and cherishment for those records.

Something had shifted. Or maybe I had been wrong all along? I’ve lost perspective. Or maybe I never had perspective? Maybe I’m insane? I don’t know. You tell me.

Regardless, here we are: reissuing this work and putting this music on vinyl for the first time! I am surprised to be excited about it. I am thrilled about it! I am surprised to find the songs have endured. The songs feel modern and rich with meaning. And Ryan Nelson created an imaginative package design that refers to and expands on his original designs from that period. I love everything about Blue Period now.

Where previously, I wanted this music buried, I now want people to have it. I want people to hear it!

I wanted to title this anthology Blue Period for three reasons. (1) The records we released during this time had blue covers. (2) comparing our music to Picasso’s art is plainly absurd. (3) It was a blue time of despair in my life and I’m glad to have come out of it.

I guess we’ll see how the world feels now.

Track Listing

1. Goodnight For Real 2023 Remaster
2. Lifeguard In Wintertime 2023 Remaster
3. The Mule On The Plane 2023 Remaster
4. Prison Song 2023 Remaster
5. The Western Prayer 2023 Remaster
6. Wont You Be Mine 2023 Remaster
7. Such Large Portions 2023 Remaster
8. Nancy Medley Girl Genius Age 15 2023 Remaster
9. Quote Devout Unquote 2023 Remaster
10. Drive Down The Cost 2023 Remaster
11. Im Just Gonna Close My Eyes For A Second 2023 Remaster
12. Terrible Things 2023 Remaster
13. Leron And Lele 2023 Remaster
14. Copyists 2023 Remaster
15. You Are Right To Be Afraid 2023 Remaster
16. Quote Devout Unquote Alternate 2023 Remaster
17. You Yes You 2023 Remaster
18. Goodnight For Real DEMO
19. This Is The Hidden Track Alternate
20. I Dont Live Today
21. Drive Down The Cost DEMO
22. Fugue State Companion
23. My Gen

Pressing Information

1000 Black 2xLP