In Smart Went Crazy, frontman and guitarist Chad Clark played the bitter man at the end of a relationship. The lyrical content ranged from the subtle to the harsh to the gleefully demented, and one glance at the titles in their repertoire is enough to convince anyone-- "A Brief Conversation Ending in Divorce," "Now We're Even," and yes, "Sugar in Your Gas Tank." Now, after the demise of the underrated D.C. post-punkers, Clark fronts the Beauty Pill as producer and mastermind, this time assuming the role of a doom-saying prophet. On their debut five-song EP, The Cigarette Girl from the Future, he details our bleak future and offers survival advice, spinning poetic yarns of everyday events along the way. But not before reminding us what exactly we have to deal with now.

On "Rideshare," Joanne Gholl provides the voice for Clark's desolate description of the daily morning commute. A drowsy, minor-key groove complements observations of "sleepdriving to a screenlit hive to exalt the flat plane," bookended by a section with driving, cluttered beats, and stuttering, dissonant guitars. "The Cigarette Girl from the Future" then takes the soundtrack to a post-modern box step (complete with handclaps), and adds the unsettling sounds of a melancholy outlook. "Mostly it's the feeling of moving into a house where the last tenant was a suicide and the landlord looks at you nervously," Clark muses, commenting on the lack of "moving sidewalks, jetpacks and hovercrafts."

Gholl provides the lead vocals once again on "The Idiot Heart," a sugarcoated, paradoxical curveball of a track that uses power-ballad techniques to contrast its ultimately destructive message. The sound recalls Dave Fridmann's latest work with the Flaming Lips, employing cello, harp and other orchestral techniques to help the sound go down sweet, as Clark advises to "strike sure, strike sharp, strike cold, aim smart."

Like any true prophet, Clark gradually becomes more ambiguous further down the line. The near-instrumental "Bone White Crown Victoria" takes a pulsing, edgy groove and foreboding bassline and treats it with mutilated samples of guitars and trumpets as cars and car horns, and the all-too-human sounds of hyperventilation. Drummer Abram Goodrich, also an ex-member of Smart Went Crazy, provides the only lyrical content in the form of muffled Spanish speech, which, after a loose English translation, reads: "The cops around here are like sharks! Check it out!" It's the sonic equivalent of being stuck at a downtown stop light under the shade of the towering skyscrapers, mere blocks away from a street battle or a car chase but unable to witness it first hand.

Finally, as the EP reaches its climax, Clark's ambiguity reaches its peak; "Here Lies Rachel Wallace" is a vague, symbolic tale of the life and death of a city person. She's seemingly labeled with serial number "B66-D99," her epitaph simply reading: "She supported herself fine." It features the finest musical accompaniment on the disc, beginning with a primitive, disco-like beat and whining guitars before transforming into a subdued shuffle. As the song mutates, the band maintains their slightly irregular, trademark D.C. edge, but also toss in cleaner guitars, stand-up bass, and eventually, gorgeous, chiming vibes. Clark's vocals and lyrics add a menacing edge to the track, and as it fades, the anchored cadence and discordant guitars rise again for a final encore.

The Beauty Pill holds potential as a force to be reckoned with, and The Cigarette Girl from the Future is a promising and exceptional starting point. At once comforting and unnerving, this record brings a fresh intelligence to lyrical cynicism, and capably invokes the chaotic noise of metropolises. On "The Idiot Heart," Gholl sings, through Clark's persona, the line that seems to encapsulate Beauty Pill's sentiment: "The bad news is there is no hope/ The good news is there never was." Fortunately, there is hope for the Beauty Pill, and if they continue in this direction, it's hard to imagine them doing much worse in the future, near or otherwise.

-Spencer Owen