Beauty Pill - The Unsustainable Lifestyle

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out today on Dischord. anyone else interested/hear it yet?

I checked one store but couldn't find it, guess I'll have to wait until I can get into the city or just order it online. I'm pretty fond of Smart Went Crazy, and the first 2 Beauty Pill EP's were promising enough.

just found an mp3 of the first track on the album here:
http://www.southern.net/southern/band/BTYPL/19639.php

not sure what I think of it. very curious about the rest, though.

Al (sitcom), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 01:05 (twenty years ago) link

I've heard the first song on it. Pretty interesting but didn't knock me out. It's in the radio station's format book so I'll probably be playing more from it.

Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 01:44 (twenty years ago) link

Beauty Pill strikes me as a Belle & Sebastian type thing, where there is a frontman with an excellent voice and great lyrics, but he farms out half the material to the lesser singers/writers (although the title track of "Con Art," which was sung by Hilary Soldati in the S.W.C. days, was AMAZING). The title track of the first EP was really fun and catchy, but nothing stood out to me on the 2nd one after like 3 listens.
I really love some Smart Went Crazy stuff, too... "A Brief Conversation Ending in Divorce" is excellent -- dark and tragic lyrics that Craig Finn could have written, with this really sinister cello line -- I think Chad Clark has a masterpiece in him somewhere. I would like to see them live. The one time I saw S.W.C., with Faraquet, I was shocked at how excellent a show it was.

Ben Boyer (Ben Boyer), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 01:46 (twenty years ago) link

four weeks pass...
So I got around to picking up the album a couple weeks ago, and I keep wanting to feel something other than underwhelmed, especially after such a long wait, but that's the feeling I keep arriving at.

the Cigarette Girl EP pointed toward a weird groove-based sound, but most of the music here is just listless midtempo rock. and the lyrics are all clever concepts and lazy cynicism with no payoff, Clark is still kind of on his game with the wordplay but it just doesn't engage me, except on "Terrible Things" and "Won't You Be Mine" when he sounds sincerely pissed off.

I'm gonna go see BP open for Q And Not U in a couple days, hopefully their live show will turn me around and keep me interested in them.

Al (sitcom), Wednesday, 14 April 2004 15:03 (twenty years ago) link

eight months pass...
what about the Caribbean the other smart went crazy offshot?

matt king, Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:08 (nineteen years ago) link

what are they like? I think my favorite SWC offshoot so far is still Faraquet. Beauty Pill's album snuck into my top 10 for the year, though, kind of by default.

Al (sitcom), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:10 (nineteen years ago) link

it was hovering in my top ten for a while, but the lyrics are kind of weak so i dropped it a few notches.

Turkey versus Eagle, McCauley is my Beagle (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:14 (nineteen years ago) link

sorry to butt in, but

http://www.thecaribbeanisaband.com/downloads.html


tony D

tony dennison, Tuesday, 11 January 2005 20:04 (nineteen years ago) link

thirteen years pass...

I was turned onto this by a friend a few years back -- it's such a great record! Funny, sharp songwriting; terrific hooks; songs that tackle political & cultural topics without becoming didactic or overbearing. It hits an "arch indie-pop" sweet spot for me -- all I can really think to compare it to at the moment are a few fairly obscure bands from a decade earlier, like Chevy Heston and Sexy Death Soda; though I'm sure there are better points of reference (the general approach also hits a Red Krayola vein for me, though it doesn't sound anything like them).

It feels to me like a overlooked indie-rock classic... although judging from this somewhat bummer thread, maybe it wasn't overlooked, it just didn't hit most people the way it hits me!

absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Tuesday, 13 March 2018 21:55 (six years ago) link

think I tried to listen to this but found their new album much more to my taste (and its thread has more posts than this)

imago, Tuesday, 13 March 2018 22:00 (six years ago) link

I gave that one a few listens, but wasn’t feeling it so much. Maybe I’ll try again...

absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Tuesday, 13 March 2018 22:07 (six years ago) link

Yeah I'm really not hearing the "songs" on the recent (2015) one... that's cool, guess this band has something for everyone!

absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Tuesday, 13 March 2018 22:27 (six years ago) link

(Postscript: I'm listening to some Red Crayola now; tracks like "An Old Man's Dream" actually aren't too bad a reference point for this album.)

absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Tuesday, 13 March 2018 23:37 (six years ago) link


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