Runner's High Life: Spice of Life, Chinook

Though Mikkeller may have been the first to the punch with a series of single-hop ales, the Spice of Life lineup just underway from Sixpoint Craft Ales is also out to prove the concept of using a single type of hop is far from a one-note experience. I for one love a beer full of fireworks. Put it in a whiskey or brandy barrel for eight months. Throw in some odd ingredients more appropriate for marinating tuna or spicing Christmas cookies. You can even toss it in an old boot and add a wild yeast that leaves the concoction tasting like it's been run through a horse blanket. I'll drink it. But sometimes, there's nothing better than a well crafted beer that doesn't look to wow you beyond the perfection of its simplicity. The Spice of Life, Chinook fits that bill, especially if you've never tasted the Chinook hop, and -- let's face it -- you never have, as all other ales you've had brewed with it were muddled with every other Tom, Dick and Harry of hops. So get it while you can clean. And like many runners will tell you, less is more, or <=>.

Runner's Hi-Fi: The War on Drugs, 'Slave Ambient'

With genres splitting into subgenres at the pace of microorganisms, it might be safe to say that The War on Drugs has created the highly marginalized category of alt country shoegazer. Vocally, "Slave Ambient" seems a rather hard-line roots record, with its echoes of everyone from Mick Jagger to Bob Dylan to Tom Petty, vocalists who have all been capable of finding whiskey and tumbleweed in their voices. Instrumentally, though, the album stands out for its ambient layering -- a bizarre crossing of electronics nob-twiddling and jam-band noodling. Sometimes The War on Drugs dispenses with vocals altogether, and you might think you're listening to another band entirely, perhaps an act like American Analog Set. "Original Slave" has the country chug of a freight train and lonely harmonica wails, yet without any lead vocals it seems pretty spacey and out there. But you're brought right back down to Earth just as soon as "Black Water Falls" kicks in, perhaps the most traditional alt country song (if an alt country song can be traditional) on the album. A new genre here? Maybe not. But it certainly is a sound that should long outlast witch house.

Runner's High Life: Life and Limb

After a 30-mile run, just about anything tastes good. But not this good. East Coast meets West Coast without a throwdown, getting along quite well, thank you, as Chico, Calif.'s Sierra Nevada teams up again with Milton, Del.-based Dogfish Head. I say again because this is the second incarnation of Life and Limb, which I'd long thought to be a one-off collaboration, leaving me pining away last go-around when it disappeared from the shelves here in New York. One major change is the bottling: Gone is the 24-ounce schoolyard bully bottle that Sierra Nevada packages some of its seasonals in (somehow, those bottles just seem a little pugnacious), and in steps the sleek 25-ounce caged and corked bottle used for the series of wonderful 30th-anniversary beers.

Other than the bottle conditioning, Life and Limb is the same amazing American strong ale marrying undertones of maple syrup and birch extract that give it its distinct character. And these undertones get a lot of compliments (and complements) along the way. Life and Limb may have an intimidating look with its deep moat of a color -- which could turn off those who don't like dark beer -- but like a good India Black Ale, the color here may be a bit deceiving. You won't find a lot of heavy-hitting earthy malt flavor in all that darkness. It's a smooth ride that picks up some nice peppery hop flavors, then finishes with the snap of birch. Life and Limb is world class, and here's raising my glass for this collaboration to continue.

Station to Station: Tuxedo to Manitou

Saturday's run, as training for The Ring:

Runner's Hi-Fi: Washed Out, 'Within and Without'

John Hughes is haunting Washed Out's "Within and Without" (Sub Pop). There have been traces of his ghost before in the rooms of other houses, wandering around inside M83's "Saturdays = Youth," Farmer Ted waking up hungover in his headgear, Gary and Wyatt with bras strapped beneath their chins conjuring. You could, of course, simply call "Within and Without" another edition to the expanding chillwave catalog. And, yes, the album is a sincere take on '80s synthpop with not a lick of irony, all the edges of its sound made murky and blurred as if traveling over a radio for three full decades. But that assessment might miss the influence here of Hughes, who seems to have become a curator for a generation of musicians too young for first-hand nostalgia for his films. Take, for instance, how any number of Ernest Greene's tracks could replace the Thompson Twins' "If You Were Here" as the outro track of "Sixteen Candles," especially "Amor Fati," where Greene almost gets breathy enough to match Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey. But Greene's greatest accomplishment on "Within or Without" is capturing Hugh's cinematic mood, an emotional space somewhere on the edge of adulthood, where childhood is just about to be lost. And perhaps adolescence is the real ghost here, John Hughes only its director.