Glide guitars, Mister Rogers samples, tear-soaked prison serenades. It’s true, The Unsustainable Lifestyle doesn’t sound much like Fugazi. On Beauty Pill’s 2004 debut LP, the local art rock band stepped away from the post-hardcore noise of the scene they came from. But, for frontman Chad Clark, it was all still part and parcel of his time with Dischord Records, from his previous band, Smart Went Crazy, and working behind the scenes on albums such as Fugazi’s The Argument.

“I was emboldened by that culture of adventurousness and punk progressive thinking,” Clark says. Though fans know Dischord for its rigorous ethics and hardcore punk origins, Clark came to appreciate the total creative freedom people like founder Ian MacKaye encouraged in him. The label supported Clark and the rest of Beauty Pill’s 2004 lineup, Basla Andolsun, Drew Doucette, Rachel Burke, and Ryan Nelson, as Clark and the band pursued strength in softness on songs such as “Goodnight For Real,” a Bush-era appeal to artistic and social responsibility—in the subversive spirit of Dischord—beneath its deceptively gentle vocals and atmospheric throb.

“That’s partially why I thought Unsustainable Lifestyle would go really well,” says Clark. “It just didn’t.”

Clark spoke with City Paper ahead of the Jan. 20 release of Blue Period, a double LP collection of Beauty Pill’s complete Dischord recordings. It includes The Unsustainable Lifestyle; their lower-fi 2003 EP, You Are Right to Be Afraid; as well as demos and outtakes. Initial reviews were dismissive of the band’s subtler sonic approach. In response, Clark all but disowned the material for years, even as fans petitioned him for a vinyl release and after reissues of Beauty Pill’s first EP, The Cigarette Girl From the Future, sold out. In addition to the cold color scheme of the band’s early album artwork, Blue Period’s title alludes to the sadness entwined with the early aughts in Clark’s memory.

“I admit that I was depressed,” he says. “My perspective might be skewed, but my memory is of putting out this record that I was extremely excited about at the time, and very optimistic about, and then being incredibly disappointed with … the kind of dumb shit that was heaped on us … I’m an emotional person, and I’m also becoming more aware as I get older that I was sensitive, and I was too easily wounded.”

The Unsustainable Lifestyle found a core of passionate supporters over the years (as of Jan. 19, hours before the record’s actual rerelease date, Blue Period had sold all but 75 copies out of its preorder vinyl run of 1,000), but in 2004 the band mostly heard feedback from critics who didn’t know how to reconcile Beauty Pill with the expectations set by Clark’s past work. AllMusic described it at the time as “certainly not terrible,” calling it more intellectual than exciting. But most devastatingly, Pitchfork, at the peak of its musical gatekeeping influence, gave The Unsustainable Lifestyle a 5.7 out of 10 in a review that criticized Clark directly. The review also devoted just as many words to the alleged influence of fellow Dischord heavy-hitter J. Robbins, a co-producer with Clark on The Dismemberment Plan’s landmark Emergency & I, but that is completely unrelated to Beauty Pill.

To both Clark and Nelson—Beauty Pill’s drummer, resident visual artist, and de facto manager at the time—Pitchfork’s review read as a complete misunderstanding of the scene. “J is a wonderful human being and a tremendous friend, but to bring J’s music up in terms of Beauty Pill—it had nothing to do with what we were doing,” says Nelson, who also worked for Dischord. Already exhausted with the talk of a “Dischord sound,” Nelson was able to shrug off the criticism outright. 

“[The review] was written by somebody who obviously didn’t have the same background knowledge of music history that we did, or that we could relate to, so I was just like, ‘Oh, this is garbage,’” says Nelson. “But man, did it really rattle Chad.”

Robbins aside, some of Clark’s most intense disappointment came from the track “Won’t You Be Mine,” a critique of Black representation in mainstream hip-hop built on clips from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He viewed it as a creative risk, but one he’d put a lot of time and thought into. He also took extra care to consult with both his bandmates and MacKaye about the song and the thought process behind it. Writers noted Clark’s choice of samples and use of the n-word, and mostly left it at that.

“This was the first moment I was like, ‘Oh, I’m facing an audience sometimes of White guys who don’t have much sensitivity or insight,’” Clark recalls.

The idea feels antiquated in the age of Twitter or TikTok standom, but in 2004, even a misinformed Pitchfork review had consequences. Especially for a band like Beauty Pill, who, at the time, was booking their own tours, playing to small crowds, and often making just enough money for the food and gas needed to get the five-piece band to their next show.

“What would have made sense for a band of Beauty Pill’s scope of ambition would be to connect with a booking agent to give access to better shows and better remuneration, and we just were shut out,” says Clark. “Agents would literally say something like, ‘You gotta get your score up.’”

These days, Clark writes about music and emphasizes: “I’m not anti-critic, but I’m gonna be very plain: That review is fucking dumb and embarrassing.”

Back when Clark first invited Nelson to join Beauty Pill, they envisioned the project as a bold and prolific working band in the pattern of Elvis Costello & the Attractions—touring relentlessly and releasing varied music unsentimentally. Making The Unsustainable Lifestyle wound up being a meticulous two-year process, and, after the difficult release, Nelson found himself unable to help Clark get back on track.

Nelson came to feel he had two choices, which he brought to Clark directly: He could play the manager and force things forward, or he could leave the group and preserve their friendship. In the end, he says, it was no choice at all. He left the band. 

“If I could change the narrative, I would love it to be like, ‘He put out this record that was ahead of its time, and then he was like, ‘Fuck all of you,’ and eventually the world came around, and it was an amazing triumph,’” Clark says of his efforts. “The truth is the story was, ‘A few people didn’t get it, and he crumbled.’” 

The Unsustainable Lifestyle would be the band’s last release with Dischord Records. For years, the sense of public rejection made Clark wary of sharing new music at all. This, combined with his bout of viral cardiomyopathy that started in 2007, meant it would take Beauty Pill more than a decade to release another LP.

When they finally rebooted for the making of 2015’s Describes Things As They Are, Beauty Pill doubled down on their avant-garde ambitions, getting even more textural—horns, harps, and even shamisen sprawl out over dreamscape tracks such as “Ann the Word.” Critics more readily embraced their second full-length effort, and, over the years, it made Clark more confident in work he previously kept to himself, including Sorry You’re Here, the soundtrack to a local 2010 theater production Beauty Pill produced and then initially declined to release.

“Describes Things changed my life, and it gave me oxygen,” Clark recalls.

The trauma associated with Blue Period has made it difficult to revisit leading up to the release, but Clark says he’s encouraged by shifts in the discourse around Black music in the past 20 years. He sees the success of artists such as D.C.’s Bartees Strange, whose forward-thinking, genre-pushing debut record was embraced by critics from the jump. In retrospect, Clark says, he’s also come to understand that his journey as an artist, through ups and downs and misunderstandings, isn’t as uncommon as he once thought.

“As a middle-aged guy looking back, I generally feel now that the world has been relatively kind to me. There are artists who toil in obscurity all their lives, and it’s painful. I’m not a rock star. Most of your friends have never heard of Beauty Pill. But I don’t really feel like the world has mistreated me the way I felt when I was younger.”

In the summer of 2022, Clark’s artificial heart failed; had it not been for an emergency transplant, Blue Period would have been a posthumous release. Instead, he’s here to witness the second life of The Unsustainable Lifestyle—a record he’d kept at such a distance that he essentially heard it for the first time during the remastering process.

“I have to say, I think it sounds really good, and I think the songs are really heartfelt,” he says. “I hope people find them to be nourishing and worthwhile.”

For his part, Nelson was hesitant when Clark approached him to work on Blue Period’s vinyl packaging. Though the music remains fraught with hard memories, he ultimately found the design process “celebratory and wonderful.” The two years spanning 2003 to 2005 may have been a blue period, but it was also a golden era for candid photos of the band touring, which Nelson collected and collaged for the album’s gatefold.

“The music is really good, and it’s something to be proud of, but it was more fun to look at the photos,” says Nelson. “Touring with Chad, it was just talking endlessly on these long drives and laughing all the time.”

Just as Nelson hoped, he and Clark have remained close friends as Beauty Pill has gone on without him, through ever bolder stylistic shifts and lineup changes. Nelson’s wife, Erin, is the band’s current singer and appears on their two most recent EPs, the pandemic-era Please Advise and Instant Night. (Today, the band consists of Clark, Erin Nelson, Andolsun, Doucette, and Devin Ocampo.) On Blue Period’s final track, the previously unreleased demo “My Gen,” you can hear the band as Nelson once imagined it: Clark on the piano at Nelson’s old house, singing into a microphone that Nelson stuck in front of him on the fly. The Unsustainable Lifestyle was never what Nelson expected, but in a way, he says, the record wound up realizing his ultimate goal for the band.

“Now I think Beauty Pill is free to redefine itself with every release, right? Which maybe is the prolific dream I’d always hoped for,” Nelson says.

Beauty Pill’s Blue Period is available to stream beginning Jan. 20 with a deluxe vinyl edition for sale on Bandcamp.