Chad Clark’s heart nearly killed him. In 2007, the frontman for the Washington, D.C.-based band Beauty Pill thought he had a bad case of the flu. It turned out to be viral cardiomyopathy, a condition that’s often quickly fatal. Open-heart surgery saved his life, once in 2008 and again in 2011, when doctors discovered Clark’s heart was failing again. It’s no surprise, then, that Beauty Pill’s new album, “Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are,” the band’s first release in a decade, opens with the lyrics “I want more life, fucker.”
It’s a quote from the movie “Blade Runner,” but it’s also something of a mission statement from Clark. Beauty Pill’s songs are dense, layered explorations, some of melancholy dreamscapes, others of characters and relationships that, when examined at the right angle, reveal hidden subtleties and cinematic dramas. Clark doesn’t want more life for himself — he wants more life for everyone, more territory to explore in music.
Clark is a veteran of the D.C. punk scene. His first band, Smart Went Crazy, was signed to Dischord Records, and Clark has produced albums for Fugazi, Lungfish, and other Dischord bands. Beauty Pill formed after Smart Went Crazy split up in 2001. With the new album, both Clark and the band have a new lease on life. Since the album was released last spring, Beauty Pill has been touring up and down the East Coast. Their next stop is at The Music Hall in Portsmouth on Saturday, Oct. 10.
The Sound recently caught up with Clark about recording in front of spectators, why he largely avoided writing about his illness, and playing at the legendary Elvis Room.
It took years for the band to finish the new album. How do you feel now that it’s out in the world?
I’m really shocked by the positivity around the record. I never realized this, but I guess I have somewhat of a pessimistic mindset. I didn’t realize it until talking to my band mates. I said, “I had no idea people would love this record as much as they seem to,” and my band mates were like, “Why would that be shocking to you?” But I’m really, really surprised — in a positive way — that it’s been embraced. … I thought it was going to be a difficult kind of esoteric (record), categorized as a challenging record as opposed to a record you like and put on for pleasure, but people seem to be into it, so that’s been encouraging.
You recorded the album in front of an audience as part of an installation at an art gallery. How did that affect its evolution?
To be precise, it’s not like it was recorded like a live album, where you’re playing to an audience. This art gallery commissioned us to be an art exhibit, to make our creative process into an exhibit, and people were allowed to watch us behind glass … so you could go see a band working. It’s similar to when you go to a construction site and you can see people working and see something being built.
And that was interesting. I’m an experimental kind of person; I like to try things. One thing about my health that has really amplified and kind of made me a little less fearful is the fact that life is short. So I think it’s made me feel freer to experiment.
I thought it would be an interesting experience. A lot of my friends think that an album takes as long to make as it takes to listen to, and I find a lot of people don’t … have an understanding of how records are made and how they’re put together. … I also wanted to show how dull that process can be. There’s a lot of sitting around and talking about it and having pizza … it’s not like it’s constant excitement. … I think the music … has real electricity in it and I think the fact we were doing things in such a public way gave it a certain kind of charge and a kind of (high) stakes.
Your illness is only directly addressed on the song “Near Miss Stories.” Having a literal broken heart seems like rich territory to mine. Why avoid it?
When people came up to me, they’d say, “I know this record is going to be packed with death songs,” and it felt like something people were expecting. And here’s the main truth: I don’t feel that I have special insight to bestow beyond what is said explicitly in that song. Most of what I learned from coming that close to death you can find already in “It’s A Wonderful Life” and The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” in the Bible, in the Koran, or in boardwalk T-shirts. … Most of what I gleaned from almost dying is already available in lots of literature … the clichés you already know: love is what is important, appreciate your time, recognize the fortune that you get to be alive on this planet, treat people kindly. … I didn’t feel like I had anything beyond what has already been said by people who are much stronger writers than I am. I didn’t want to soak the record with that. Mortality comes into a lot of the songs in a more subtle or abstract way. None of these songs would exist had I not had that experience.
The songs on the album seem to adopt the points of view of different characters. Is coming up with those narratives part of the songwriting process?
I’m not aware of that when I’m writing. I start writing and a kind of melody emerges before words, and then the words begin to form when I get a feeling of where the melody is leading. … I’m critical of indie rock as a general aesthetic terrain and I think one of the things I find to be weak is this kind of abstraction where I can tell the person who wrote the song didn’t have any thoughts in their head at all; it’s just a bunch of strung-together bullshit.
I come from the world of Dischord (Records) and Fugazi and those are songs that have real content and real meaning, so that’s the culture that I come from. I feel like Beauty Pill has its own way of carrying that value forward. Getting a feeling or an idea across is important. Songs are so powerful — you have four minutes to say something and it’s going to be heard and felt with melody and with music, so it seems like an opportunity that, if you have ideas you want to express to the world, why not use songwriting as a vehicle for that? I find these ideas kind of instinctually and not deliberately.
What’s next for Beauty Pill? Are you working on new material?
We’re working on a new record. I wanted it to have a different feel than this record — I like this record a lot, I’m happy with it, happy it’s done so well, but I want to do something with a different character to it. This album is very colorful … and there’s this kind of psychedelic sprawling quality to this record and I would like to do something that’s the opposite of that.
Smart Went Crazy played the Elvis Room years ago. Do you have fond memories of Portsmouth? Is this your first time back?
As a musician, I haven’t been back. I’m excited about it. I do have fond memories from Smart Went Crazy, but those are very old memories at this point. So I’m very curious about the current scene and what it’s like and what the current arts world of Portsmouth is like. I’m excited about it.
Beauty Pill performs Saturday, Oct. 10 at 8 p.m. at The Music Hall Loft, 131 Congress St., Portsmouth. Tickets are $16, available at 603-436-2400 or themusichall.org.