ANCHOR STEAM XMAS, SARANAC VANILLA STOUT, ET AL

Our Special Ale 2010 - Anchor Steam (CA)
VERDICT: Good winter beer (B+)
Every year, Anchor Steam's Christmas Ale (aka Our Special Ale) is apparently slightly different — I don't know how different, but I do know that 2009's and 2010's have been two of the tastiest winter beers I've had.  This "winter warmer" is sweet and rich, with a sort of malty, spicy molasses taste not far removed from a Belgian double, but toned down for drinkability.  Despite the dark mahogany color, the Special Ale is relatively light, almost creamy, with only a slightly sticky mouthfeel hindering its smoothness.  The spices manage to create a distinct Christmas flavor, and while I remember liking 2009's recipe maybe slightly more, this is still a delicious seasonal beer that I highly recommend grabbing if you find it.

Saranac Vanilla Stout - The Matt Brewing Company (NY) 
VERDICT: Good stout, could use more vanilla (B)
Saranac (aka Matt Brewing Co) is one of my most trusted breweries, consistent and workmanlike as the Adirondack mountains they call home, but their lineup can be surprisingly adventurous too.  Their caramel porter really impressed me, so I was excited to find a vanilla stout in my winter mix pack.  The idea of a vanilla stout is as appealing to me as a folk-influenced post-rock band comprised entirely of bears, but I've only found one other example — Southern Tier's Creme Brule Stout, which is incredibly delicious.  Saranac's vanilla stout is much more down-to-earth, as one might expect from the brewery, and the vanilla flavor is just not strong enough.  It's there, making for a smoother, cleaner mouthfeel (and giving the beer a pleasant smell), but it doesn't do enough to distinguish this beer from other stouts.  It's like a milk stout but not quite as smooth — in fact, the vanilla seems to somehow blend in with the slightly-bitter hop notes rather than smothering them.  It's not that this beer is lacking in taste, though — beer drinkers who prefer their experiments on the subtle side should enjoy this one, as it's an all-around good stout, well-balanced, drinkable and very tasty.

Pumpkin Ale - Kennebunkport (ME)
VERDICT: Pumpkin-flavored soda (C-)
At six dollars for a sixpack, Kennebunkport's pumpkin ale is the cheapest pumpkin beer I've ever seen, but since I got it at Trader Joe's, that didn't seem too unusual until I realized that it was brewed by a genuine brewery from Maine.  Then I noticed that the bottle reads "ale with natural flavor added," which makes this the only pumpkin beer I know of where the pumpkin flavor is added via some kind of syrup, instead of incorporating it into the brewing process (or skipping pumpkin altogether and just throwing in pumpkin pie spices, as most do.)  At first, I was surprised — cheating on the pumpkin at least gives this beer a stronger flavor than most, and the pumpkin taste is extremely pronounced.  Unfortunately, it's just not very good.  The beer is so light, the syrupy pumpkin flavor so clear, it's more like drinking soda than beer.  There's a sort of sticky sweetness that might be initially pleasing, but wears out its welcome quickly. Pumpkin flavor is inherently too subtle to be overpowering, but this is the pumpkin ale most likely to disgust avid beer drinkers.

Josephs Brau Dunkelweizen - Trader Joe's (CA)
VERDICT: Good, and cheap (B)
If you've had any of Trader Joe's store-brand beers before, you should know what to expect: solid representations of traditional styles that taste better than they have any right to, while remaining ludicrously cheap.  Their hefeweizen remains one of my favorite American takes on the style, so I'm not surprised that their recently released dunkel similarly impresses.  Appropriately dark and rich, this dunkel isn't notably different from the hefeweizen except in color and a heightened reliance upon malts.  Which is not unusual for the style, though some might knock it for not being bolder, and for being slightly watery.  Personally, the taste and mouthfeel are pleasant enough that I don't mind it being a little unadventurous — it's hard to imagine a beer with as nice of a flavor as this being any more drinkable (or cheaper.)  Sure, I'm grading this beer on a scale.  Nonetheless, it's delicious and a great deal.

SUBURBAN DISCONTENT: AMERICAN BEAUTY AND REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

Until I sat down to write this review, it hadn't actually occurred to me that Sam Mendes directed both American Beauty (1999) and Revolutionary Road (2008).  I remembered that he was responsible for at least one of them, but I figured I was getting myself confused and couldn't remember which.  So that wasn't why I decided to write this joint analysis — honestly, I just happened to watch both films within a week of each other, and I was struck by how well they complimented each other thematically.  And now... that makes sense.  Both are films book-ending the era of American suburban expansion, examining jaded, former idealists — and taken together, they add up to a unique statement on American suburban ennui.  I wonder where Sam Mendes lives?

I already agree with the angle Mendes seems to be honing in on, but I suspect it isn't terribly important to what's going on here.  These films aren't about the suburbs being good or bad on their own.  They never attempt to demonstrate that suburbs are culturally bankrupt compared to other modes of living, or inferior to cities, even if their inhabitants are shown in a harsh light  These aren't films about societal sustainability — they're about cultural sustainability.  Mendes falls upon the suburbs as a symbol of a lifestyle that was becoming quintessentially American around the time of Revolutionary Road, and by American Beauty's era, had established itself as the status quo.  In another sense, the suburbs are simply a metaphor for failed American idealism.

Back before I realized that both had the same director, I was especially struck by how much these movies are inversions of each other.  Revolutionary Road is set in Connecticut in the 50's, and follows a couple (Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) forced to settle down because of their kids.  They are a pair of vaguely-artistic self-appointed outsiders; they consider themselves better than the system, and want to move to Paris to regroup and figure out what their calling in life is. Friends of the couple consider them immature and slightly crazy for wanting to pack up and leave — like many idealists, DiCaprio's character seems to have no idea what he's running to or what he's running from, and that's where the trouble appears.  After all, 50's America was a time of finally embracing normalcy, when suburban societal rhythms were being established and America as a whole was transforming into a middle aged version of itself, rich and ready to pay for reliable comforts and picket fences.  On its own, Revolutionary Road is a fascinating look at the underside of an era when media, advertising and government were bizarrely united in portraying a simplified, sterilized image of regular American life.  "Normalcy does not inspire happiness" could be the tagline of either of these films.  American Beauty takes place presumably at the same time it was filmed, the late nineties, and once again develops around a married couple who appear normal, who try to act happy, and are neither of those things.  It's another story of a marriage falling apart, another warning that one day you might wake up and out-of-nowhere realize how miserable you are. Both stories spiral toward tragedy due to miscommunication and discontent — or maybe inevitability.  On the surface, these films would seem to more or less make the same statement, but it's the differences in tone that captured my interest — like I said, they serve as book-ends, not only to the way culture changed (or didn't change) in the five decades between their characters, but also in the decade separating their creation.   

American Beauty is very much a 90's movie, both in its setting and feel — flippant, jaded, sarcastic.  Everything is slightly tongue-and-cheek, yet with that undercurrent of anti-corporate, anti-establishment cynicism that cropped up after the Reagan era but never congealed with the focus of the 70's punk era.  It's no fluke here, and the cynicism may not all trace back to Mendes.  While rewatching Beauty, I was struck how close in tone it is to another movie from the same period: Donnie Darko.  These movies wouldn't seem to have anything in common on the surface, but if you strip out the metaphysical sci-fi from Darko, the rest is strikingly similar in tone and ideology.  It's the era, not specific filmmakers, of course. That cynical, middle-finger sense of humor can be found in other 90's movies like Office Space, Clerks, Fight Club, and so on.  A lot of the material in American Beauty could have been even darker than it was, if not centered around such a relaxed, enjoyable actor as Kevin Spacey.  Yet compared to Revolutionary Road, Beauty seems tame, almost a comedy.  There are fewer sinister events in Revolutionary Road, up until its ending, yet the film feels much colder. It lacks humor; its characters seem doomed — there's an almost apocalyptic air to it, as if innocent young America were ambling along obliviously into decades of chaos and war (well, okay.)  That the story is so simple, the character's struggles so domestic, only makes it seem more tragic.  Decades later, America had suffered plenty, and suddenly the same suburban discontent is skewed from the other end.  The same unanswerable questions about marriage and happiness and success — suddenly it's not that you're looking ahead and seeing dark clouds on the horizon, you're looking back, thinking, "Oh, whatever. That sucked.  F**k it."  It's a perspective uniting both the cultural background of the movies, and the characters themselves: in Revolutionary Road, the couple is young, eager, looking forward to life; in Beauty, they've endured a thankless marriage for years, and are bored with their suffering.  Even their young daughter has already become resigned, ready to run off with a boy who shows some hint of unconformity and passion.

It's probably suggestive that the dread Road builds around was best captured in the 00's, despite it serving as a period piece.  The mood is straightforward, haunted, capturing the feeling that something big has changed and god knows what those changes might mean.  The suburban lifestyle was well established by the 90's, but that feeling of despair over mere angst has reappeared in strength these last few years.  Except this time, it isn't a sense of naive idealism that's failing us — it's the ability to survive through apathy and sarcasm.  And not in a good way.  We found no relief in the 00's, in the honest, unadorned tone of films like Revolutionary Road.  By the end of the movie, the characters don't really know how to react — they simply are where they are, and there's little they can do about it until their lives return to something that appears normal.

MONUMENTS (BY) DEAD EMPIRES

Metal / Progressive / Instrumental
2011, self-released (download here)
MySpace / Facebook / Last.fm

I've heard heavier albums than Monuments, sure. Heaviness often results from context, and there are bands that write grimmer, denser, eviler songs than Dead Empires. But for an instrumental three-piece that doesn't rely on dark atmosphere, Monuments is one of the most concussive albums I've listened to in a while. Real deep heaviness usually goes hand-in-hand with the grim processional style of doom metal, or the thudding straight-forwardness of sludge metal.  It isn't easy to make music this pulverizing that still sounds unique, that doesn't smother its tone in one crusty monolithic texture.  Maybe it works because Dead Empires writes music that also happens to be very fast — and maybe that's enough to disguise their influences — but these don't sound like guys who sat down to write heavy instrumental music because any one band inspired them to do so.  If anything, it sounds like a fan of sludge metal got together with a fan of thrash metal, added a prog metal dude, and then, with no one dominating their influences, combined powers equally like some awesome metal version of Captain Planet (please, someone, for the love of satan: make Metal Captain Planet and the Metalteers happen. "From Sweden, Vegard, with the power of black metal!  From Portland, Haughm, with the power of pagan folk metal!")  Heaviness often comes at the cost of dexterity and intensity, but not here: Dead Empires is never so intent on maiming your senses that they lose focus on interesting songwriting and forward monument. Monuments doesn't have the emotional darkness that often makes metal seem heavier than it is — in this case, it's just really heavy and genuinely intense.

With any instrumental band, there's always going to be some asshole who comments: "It's good, but it would be better with a vocalist."  If you're a fan of such music, you've learned to ignore these people, because they're impossible to reason with.  (I bet there was someone who said this to Mozart, and he probably listened to whatever the 18th Century equivalent of Avenged Sevenfold was.)  Dead Empires make a good case for the versatility of instrumental music, as I suspect they weren't particularly influenced by any of the major post-metal players anyway.  Isis, Pelican and Russian Circles have been ripped off by dozens of bands, and for good reason.  Their songwriting style and skills are perfectly suited to creating a certain atmosphere, and that atmosphere becomes synonymous with the band — then an entire, narrow subgenre.  Not every band is so creative, or has their own 'tone,' and so many bands keep their influences close.  But when you're channeling a band whose success is based on atmosphere and identity, the music you write runs a risk of sounding watered-down — it's no longer a matter of borrowing a few guitar techniques or a vocal style, as when broader metal subgenres were still forming fifteen years ago.  At this point you're mimicking the actual emotion of another band's music, and therefore, yours is going to sound false and stale. Dead Empires doesn't shoot for a particular atmosphere; they kept their focus on intensity and songwriting.  The music here is dense in addition to just 'heavy,' and that's what ultimately dispels the "should have had vocals" bullshit.  Where are there even room for vocals here?  I wouldn't say that it's necessarily easier to write songs based around lyrics, but doing so can give a song structure; instrumental bands have the added challenge of compensating for that backbone, and many fail to write music that speaks for itself.  Monuments has enough crammed into every moment that full vocals would seem almost superfluous.  The band had plenty of other ideas to explore.  That sort of density isn't particularly common among instrumental metal, and it's refreshing to find here — a band that didn't set out to write music with an inspirational agenda, and wouldn't have room for lyrics anyway, once all the riffs are in.

Monuments isn't a particularly genre-bending album, but it's influences have been blended perfectly, to the point where it's hard to say that it sounds like anyone in particular.  Dead Empires doesn't fit into any current scene that I can think of, but I hope that doesn't work against them.  There's the heaviness of contemporary sludge-metal, and even some of the meandering prog tendencies that Mastodon and Kylesa have both explored with recent albums. But there's also a bit of unhinged, hardcore restlessness that gives the album such a jolt of adrenaline, not to mention the punch of thrash and death metal.  And while I don't think Dead Empires was influenced to write atmospheric soundscapes, don't get the impression that tone isn't important here.  Guitarist John Bryan plays with an almost jammy psychedelic smoothness that blends a sense of groove into the galloping, obliterating riffs of songs like "Villains" — instead of sounding like the band is switching from 'heavy moment' to 'texture-building moment.'  The rolling drums and bass pound along perfectly, and give the album its snap, helping the music merge heaviness and intensity without noticeably changing pace.  Even at only four songs, Monuments runs through a lot of material, but all of it packs a punch.  Heavy usually just sounds like heavy — or another band's brand of heavy, a certain guitar-tone brand of heavy — but Dead Empires manages to circumvent that identity crisis, and only one EP into their career.

BLACK SWAN (2010, DARREN ARANOFSKY)

Black Swan makes a pretty good first film to review, it turns out. It's a really well made movie, objectively, yet I didn't particularly enjoy the experience of watching it.  Movies like this contain some interesting lessons in the subjectivity inherent to enjoyment of films, something that film criticism often ignores entirely. Black Swan is a psychological horror movie, and probably the most painfully tense movie I've seen since No Country For Old Men. Don't watch the trailer (more on that later.)  All you need to know, plot-wise, is that this is a heavily tone and character based movie about a ballerina losing herself to the music, the moment. (This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo.)  It will be enjoyed by those who enjoy horror, and it deserves to earn Oscar noms for Aranofsky and Natalie Portman. It's an impressive and interesting movie, certainly.  But if you, like me, have never learned to savor horror-tinged tension, cringe-worthy scenes of fingernail clipping, body mutilation and creaking, bloody feet, all enacted by off-putting, obsessive characters, there's very little else here to enjoy. (And, Jesus spinning Christ, I never want to see anyone's foot ever again.)

On a technical level, the movie is nearly impeccable.  Aranofsky's direction embodies both the technical perfection and unhinged madness discussed throughout the movie, even if he tries maybe a bit too hard, getting a little overblown toward the end and tossing out too much over-thought cinematography, such as Vincent Cassel's absurdly black-and-white apartment full of swan imagery.  Portman is perhaps the best thing about the movie, and shapes her character effortlessly.

I mentioned not to watch the trailer. Don't. If you know anything about the movie at all, there are few surprises here. Really, that was my greatest disappointment: everything happened exactly as I expected it to.  The story does hold a few surprises in the end, but only in the specifics — I assumed it would have a certain 'type' of ending, and it did. Aside from cringing at the many uncomfortable scenes, I felt like I was watching a movie I had seen a few years ago and forgotten about. It's not that the trailer gives anything away; it's more that there isn't much to give away, once you get a handle on the characters and style of the film. Of course, the storytelling in Black Swan is far from lazy; it's just based on the assumption that you enjoy tension. Granted, I've enjoyed many other tension-filled movies, but most of them have some form of payoff. No Country For Old Men was almost unbearable to watch, but I'd say I enjoyed the film because of its unique characters and mixture of Western and Noir tones, the message that tension was sculpting.  And that is, of course, boiling things down to my personal taste.  Black Swan is a very dry movie.  If you like the tone here, then you'll like the movie. If you don't — well, there's little else going on except the impressive direction and acting. There isn't a single moment of comedy, nor are there really any character or societal insights. It's fine for a movie to be so singularly focused. It's why film criticism so often misses the point. Black Swan isn't trying to appeal to everyone. (It might be trying a little too hard to appeal to the Oscar crowd, but I digress.)  As a very well-made, artistically accomplished film, it has nothing else to prove; it does what it does quite well.

Grade: B

LZ-'75 (BY) STEPHEN DAVIS

Published 2010, 215 pages
Characters: n/a
Writing: C+
Plot: n/a
Pacing: B
Poignancy: B-

Fact: Led Zeppelin is the greatest band of all time. There are very few bands that I would be interested in reading a book-length account of, much less a book focused specifically on one tour, but I would read just about anything detailing Zeppelin's zany shenanigans. At the peak of their power, they weren't just the most popular, highest-selling band in the world — they crafted a cult-like mystique around themselves, birthing bizarre urban legends, rumors of black magic and deals with the devil.  The mass media hated them, journalists feared them, and interviews were rare.  It didn't matter that Rolling Stone refused to acknowledge their existence for six years — Zeppelin had no trouble selling out massive coliseums in a matter of minutes.

By the release of Physical Graffiti in 1975, however, it was hard to ignore Zeppelin's dominating presence, and the American media started paying attention.  Stephen Davis — a music journalist who, by his own admission, was only passingly familiar with Zeppelin at the time — wanted in.  He got in, of course, flying around with Zeppelin in the Starship on their rocky-but-pivotal American 1975 winter tour.  Unfortunately, LZ-'75 isn't the first thing he's written as a result of those experiences. In fact, it's the third, but after churning out an article and another book, he somehow managed to lose most of his notes from the tour.  When Davis rediscovered them a few years ago (and obviously, realized how much money he could make by milking another book out of them), he decided to turn them into LZ-'75.

Judging by the reviews on Amazon, there's not much here that isn't covered by other Zeppelin biographies, or even in Davis' other pieces.  I haven't read any other Zeppelin accounts, so that wasn't a dealbreaker for me, but LZ-'75 is certainly on the anemic side.  Davis was granted fairly extensive backstage access, and writes about the band with appropriate reverence and knowledge.  Yet it's clear that Davis was never really an insider.  He writes like a journalist, and only ever had the access of a journalist.  Though he adds some personal backstory, musings and scant analysis, most of the narrative is taken up by descriptions of Zeppelin's performances.  Reading about shows is nowhere near as exciting as experiencing them, however, and after some early-tour drama and set-backs, each performance begins to sound fairly redundant.  Davis delves deep into his thesaurus and does an admirable job of describing each song in a dozen different ways, but he's not a great music writer, and the strain shows by the end.  As a product of the 70's, Davis' prose (or maybe Davis himself) can get a little hammy, and most of the time he simply tries too hard.  It's not the 70's anymore, and though it's fun to see that energy captured in moments, too much of it makes LZ-'75 read as sensational rather than revealing.  Personally, I was never close to bored, but this is definitely one for fans of the band — aficionados of rock'n'roll history can probably find more thorough accounts.