21ST AMENDMENT BEERS

Back In Black - 21st Amendment (CA)
This beer has a bit of identity crisis, but as Americans — a hodgepodge mix of those bold immigrants who found refuge here over the years, after rebelling against their imperialist governors and slipping into the sweaty, moist-palmed embrace of democracy — don't we all have a bit of an identity crisis?  It's a question that, I can only assume, 21st Amendment is trying to pose with Back In Black, the brewery's black IPA.  This style's been popping up a bit more in the last year, but black IPA's are still far from common. And for an IPA, this beer is extremely malty. It's sweet not in the way many double IPA's are, or even 21st Amendment's Bitter American — it's sweet in that slightly-tangy, almost grapefruity way Belgians sometimes are, with hints of coffee and brown sugar.  Like a Belgian double got mixed in with an pale ale.  The hops are present, but aren't the focus at all, which tips the balance oddly far from bitter.  And as dark as it is, the mouthfeel is a bit like a porter, making the combination all the stranger.  It might not be for everyone, but I think it works.  If I have a major complaint, it's that the overall effect could be a little smoother.  The tangyness is a bit much, and it's almost like drinking juice, but it fades quickly enough into sweetness that I never really cared.  This isn't a beer you would want to drink a sixpack of all at once, but I enjoyed every one of them on their own. 

Bitter American - 21st Amendment (CA)
The can rules. This beer rules — definitely my favorite of the three, easily. I'm having a hard time pinpointing exactly what 21st Amendment's "thing" is.  It seemed like maybe they aim for the more experimental side, little subtle differences that compliment the uniqueness of their packaging.  Yet Bitter American is just all-around solid.  For a pale ale, or even just a hoppy ale, it's very drinkable — an easy session beer for a few reasons.  It's well-blended, well-balanced, and slightly sweet, with a more noticeable malts presence.  The hops are surprisingly subdued, especially for a beer with "bitter" in its name.  It's light and sweet almost to the point of being creamy, and only in the aftertaste do you get a bit of that floral, spicy hoppiness, with a bitter kick that might have some of the aluminum-can taste jumping around.  Or that might just be my imagination — you hardly notice it, either way.  The ABV on this one is low, so that probably helps.  Too bad this is a seasonal, because I'd be quick to drink this all year round. 

Fireside Chat - 21st Amendment (CA)
Riding on top of a strong, already-sharp prune flavor, this is the only beer of the bunch where I definitely noticed some metallic flavor lingering from the can.  It wasn't significant, and really, it might have all been in my head, or even part of the spices. Those spices end up rising sharply into the aftertaste, making the beer seem initially flat and almost bitter, and later leaving a lot of 'leftover' flavor in the mouth.  Regardless, I would not advise drinking this straight from the can — or any of these, for that matter. For the love of god, pour it into a pint glass.  At least as Fireside Chat warms and mellows out, the mouthfeel becomes smoother and richer, rather than sharp.  This one is a lot like other winter spice beers, similar even to a Belgian double, just without the complexity.  Not bad, and perfectly drinkable, but not as interesting as I was expecting.

THIS WILL DESTROY YOU (BY) THIS WILL DESTROY YOU

Post-Rock / Ambient
2008, Magic Bullet Records
MySpace / Last.fm

More than any other form of entertainment, I think
relationships with music are a lot like relationships with people. Chances are, I'm going to listen to an album I like dozens of times in a year, and there's really nothing else that I interact with to that extent. I might watch my favorite movies once or twice a year, at most.  My favorite books?  A few times in my life.  As with people, I'm surrounded by music constantly, and as with people, that relationship is often complicated and unpredictable. Sometimes you meet someone that throws you off at first, even if you can't pinpoint why.  Maybe something about them doesn't quite click with you.  Maybe they bore you.  Sometimes those people end up being the closest to you, as much as you wouldn't have thought it.  Or maybe the opposite — sometimes the most interesting-seeming people turn out to be pretty superficial after getting to know them.  It's the same with some albums.  It's the reason music means so much to people — it is entirely possible, and only slightly weird, to have a relationship with an album that changes and grows over time.  (And while you can't hug or cuddle an album, you can stare lovingly at their album covers in your candle-lit room at night. Not that I've done that.) 

I really liked This Will Destroy You's first album, Young Mountain, when it came out.  A lot of people accused them of being an Explosions In The Sky rip-off, but I thought Young Mountain was better than anything Explosions had ever put out — less cloying, more dynamic and structured.  Then, in early 2008, they released their self-titled, and those comparisons died a quiet death.  Sadly, so did my interest.  Despite the tongue-in-cheek goofiness of the album cover, their self-titled saw the band dropping most of the song-structured prettiness, moving away from obvious emotional hooks toward expansive ambient soundscapes.  Songs still follow a typical post-rock formula, but at an unhurried, linear pace, shrugging off melody in place of texture.  All at once, TWDY stopped writing songs that sounded catered to triumphant movie trailers — this album feels like the soundtrack to some actionless, indie Western.  It's patient, layered and purposeful, rather than a collection of pretty-sounding tunes.  I wasn't very interested in that, two years ago.  Post-rock often ignores easy hooks, but this was ambient even at its heaviest.  It demonstrated an interesting new direction for the band, but it just didn't hold my attention.

Still, since I didn't dislike the album, I kept it around.  About a year ago I started throwing it on every now and then when I needed something droney, something that wouldn't distract me.  And I realized something odd.  Even though the music didn't quite hold my attention, I still enjoyed it.  A lot.  Now, I had other albums I kept around as background music.  Music that's just kind of there, and nice enough that I don't mind it being there.  But TWDY's self-titled was different, somehow.  It was engaging, so long as I didn't focus on it too much.  This album is a musical Magic Eye — I could see the big picture (a sailboat) only when I let my brain go a bit fuzzy, when I absorbed the album without staring directly at it.  And I enjoyed the big picture immensely.  All it once it clicked how much this album is right up my alley, with its melancholy warmth and its open, Westerny sense of space. So I kept putting it on whenever I didn't mind zoning out, and it turned out that was pretty often.  It put me in an almost meditative mood, and despite the fact that I rarely gave the album my full attention, soon enough I was addicted to it.  For an album with few hooks or obvious emotions, I've come to crave the experience of listening to these seven songs, the way they run around you rather than through you, blinking into your attention before dissolving into haze.

Ultimately, the difference between this and other patient, slow-paced post-rock might be little more than tone — which is really what defines post-rock to begin with.  Most instrumental bands fall on bright melodies if they want to inspire, or cold, moody guitar-work if they want to depress — obviously.  It's easy enough to make that work when your sound is structured around tone.  On their self-titled, TWDY doesn't go for those easy emotions.  Their tone is almost neutral, evocative without being cluttered or cloying.  The guitarwork is felt more than heard.  It's as if the music has been stripped of its top layer, the melody that other bands might structure songs around, leaving just the droning, reverby undertow.  More and more, bands like Explosions In The Sky and Mono sound like meandering strings of pretty melodies to me — but here, every moment of the album is part of the greater whole, building toward a tone and atmosphere that sneaks a vast panorama right in under your nose.  It's what makes the music hard to pin down initially, while giving it such deep, resonating impact — this album is beautiful, it is emotional, but it wants to steer you toward these realizations, rather than dowsing you in them immediately. There is a sense of direction, a linear narrative that tugs you forward like the pull of a river, and the songwriting is often deceptively straightforward. You could call it simplicity, I guess.  But for as simple as it is, I've found that very few albums are paced with such confidence.  There are few flourishes, few stylistic surprises — some glitch-style electronica overlays the guitar melodies here and there, and somehow conveys the mesmerizing, crackling warmth of a campfire instead than the cold industrial vibe you'd expect.  Nothing is a distraction here, much less superfluous.

This Will Destroy You paints a clear picture of an abstract feeling, and I just couldn't see it at first.  Few bands can pull that off.  Since I've already established my pretentiousness by comparing music to landscapes, I'm going all out here — this is what makes music stick around for me, not catchy Top 40 hooks.  Sure, you'll enjoy those earworms in 10 years out of nostalgia, but complexity allows a relationship to actually grow.  Lots of artists can paint a clear picture of a simple feeling, and that's important too.  But simplicity generally doesn't build long-lasting relationships.  More often, you find acquired tastes are the ones that stick around.

127 HOURS AND INTO THE WILD

127 Hours - Danny Boyle, 2010
Into The Wild - Sean Penn, 2007

It's not easy for a director to make a film where the ending doubles as the selling-point, where there's no real potential to surprise your audience with the outcome. Sure, maybe there were a few people who innocently went to see the movie about "the guy who gets trapped beneath a rock," wondering what would happen to the poor fellow. I'm extremely curious how such a person's reaction to 127 Hours might differ from someone who went to see the movie about [SPOILER?] "the guy who has to cut his own arm off to escape from under a rock." The focus of the movie would seem to change completely — likewise with Into The Wild, a story about [again, SPOILERS, I guess, but you might as well stop reading and just go see the movies] Chris McCandless, a young kid with a bad case of Kerouvac Syndrome, who hiked into the Alaskan wilderness, lived in an abandoned bus for four months, and never made it back out. Most people know how these stories end, but that's not the point. They're still remarkable stories, made much more remarkable because they actually happened. The danger for those translating them to film is how easily they demonstrate a few really obvious lessons. The same holds true for almost any non-fiction account of tragedy, but the important difference here is the tragedy is self-perpetuated. It's an unwritten law of cinema that any movie about a hiker / adventurous type (see also: people who have survived the apocalypse) must scream in 72 point font, Comic Sans: HEY SO OTHER PEOPLE ARE REALLY IMPORTANT YOU SHOULD TOTALLY VALUE THEM IN YOUR LIFE. Of course, no one realizes this until they're hallucinating and on the verge of death. Because, let's face it, if the value of other people has never impressed itself upon you before, you're not going to have this epiphany waiting on the platform for the G train at 9 in the morning. Or in your cubicle, listening to your coworker's stupid story about spooning his girlfriend and throwing his back out. This lesson is so broad that it will mean a lot more when we, as viewers, understand why it has to be learned in the first place.

Hikers and outdoorsy types come in any number of varieties, like any demographic big enough to have entire department stores catered to them, but there are a few broad archetypes. Aron Ralston, as depicted by James Franco in 127 Hours, seems to be a classic adrenaline junky. Into The Wild's Chris McCandless, played by Emile Hirsch, is what I'd describe as the "misguided hippie" archetype. The obvious link between these two men is their love of the outdoors. An adrenaline junky could get their fix in any number of ways, but a climbing nerd is a special sort, in it for both the nature, the spectacle and the rush. McCandless undoubtedly felt the need for adrenaline as well, but his appreciation of the outdoors is a more thoughtful, patient sort, influenced as much by literature and some deep-seated family issues than the pure embrace of adventure. These two archetypal mindsets strongly influence the direction and pacing of their respective films, which makes sense. Unfortunately, like the men they're based on, both take it just a bit too far, and neither quite nails the landing.

Comparing any two films is an arbitrary exercise, of course. They're not competing against each other and they were not intended to compliment each other, but these are similar films with similar messages. James Franco does a terrific job capturing what Ralston went through in 127 Hours, the nuances of a man who can barely move but watches his life flash before him over the days he's trapped. Yet it's Boyle's direction that truly drives the emotion — even when Franco doesn't have much to do but shout and scream in pain. Boyle proves that it required a full movie to show us Aron Ralston's plight — and maybe in some unintended ways, as I would argue that the movie doesn't show enough. Eventually the screaming / shouting / pain comes to an end, and the movie finishes on the most obvious of lessons: people are important. Totally don't ignore your mom's phone calls. Is it effective? Yes. I was very moved, even inspired. The movie leaves you feeling good, but when I thought about it later, I wanted more. 127 Hours is a bit of an adrenaline junky itself, rushing toward that quick fix, the broad, bold conclusion. It's a technical accomplishment to film an action movie where the main character can barely move, but technical accomplishments often aren't as interesting as their context. The nuances Franco manages to convey by reacting to his limited environment are impressive, but we're never given a hint of why he is this way — the psychological background that would make his eventual triumph feel like catharsis, rather than just relief. What makes an adrenaline junky the way he is? And how much of a loner was he, anyway? Boyle offers hints of explanation, indications that he could have been closer with his parents, that he misses an ex-girlfriend, but these background issues could apply to nearly any character ever. Telling us that Ralston is pining over some failed, undefined relationship leaves vague loose-ends tangling in the past of the character.

It's interesting that Franco's character only begins to appreciate the sexual interest of his three female co-stars when he's on the verge of death. In Into The Wild, Chris McCandless is even more asexual, never once pursuing a romantic relationship, even when he's offered one flat-out. But it's not just romantic relationships that he walks away from, it's all relationships. Hirsch's character seems incapable of forming any permanent bonds, yet he's happy with his lifestyle. He knows what he wants in his life, and creates a charismatic specter of wish-fulfillment that sucks in those around him and leaves them heartbroken when he so casually moves on. It's not that he doesn't get along well with people. He's great with people, excels in their company in fact, but he views these interactions as experiences building up to something greater, something more personal, more about Chris McCandless. Ralston and McCandless are men who are in love with nature, and probably, in love with themselves. Neither film addresses this head-on, but it's obvious, and Into The Wild does a far better job of character development simply due to the structure of the film. We understand the relationship McCandless had with his parents. We figure out how he could leave behind his old friends so easily. And while he's never shown with any sort of romantic past, it's easy to see why. Though 127 Hours is a marvel of direction, and the superior movie on a technical level, Into The Wild nonetheless manages to tell a more developed story.

There's really no reason Into The Wild couldn't have been told the same way as 127 Hours. Chris McCandless only spent about three or four months in the Alaskan wilderness, and in the last week or two of his life, he was also trapped. Not by a rock, but trapped by a river and his own recklessness. Both films could have unraveled their stories with a similarly narrow focus. Yet Into The Wild wisely chose to spend much of its running time showing the past of the character, cutting to his time in Alaska only for brief scenes. Penn is far from the director that Boyle is, and in a sense, he had to take this direction — Boyle's character lived, giving him a lot of artistic freedom in building up to that moment, whereas Penn's tale would have been much more of a downer without that broad context and character development. I don't blame Boyle for taking the material he was given and trying to make his movie as unique as possible; he pulled it off. But Into The Wild manages to explain a great deal of what 127 Hours leaves dangling. To be fair, Into The Wild is far from perfect itself.  Apart from some odd directorial choices, there's simply too much material crammed into its running time, making the same point so often that the ending seems almost insincere. We understand everything McCandless abandoned to reach his final destination, even if we never do see him really cherish anything. Only on his deathbed does he seem to miss the company of other people, and even then, his drive is still sort-of selfish: "happiness only real if shared." Aron Ralston only learned to update his Facebook status so people know where he's hiking. (Too bad we'll never get the sequel, "127 Days Later.") 127 Hours isn't a failed movie due to its lack of context. Into The Wild demonstrates how too much context can drag a film down, but I still believe a lot of the most interesting material in Aron Ralston's story was dropped because it didn't fit into Boyle's dramatic vision. And anyway, that's okay. Sometimes drama is self-fulfilling. I'm not sure whether I'd call 127 Hours a great movie, but it is a great experience. No matter what you believe about the importance of people, you have to admit — great experiences are pretty sweet too.