This week is the Beer Issue! I wrote a story that’s as much about arts as it is about booze: I followed around Pabst Blue Ribbon’s marketing manager in D.C.—-a guy who on the way to selling you beer may also sponsor your arts event. In the arts section proper: Trey Graham tries to make sense of his very visceral reaction to Forum Theatre’s Scorched, and also reviews the shallow but pleasant Sabrina Fair. Tricia Olszewski has an effing blast at Red, but is let down by Stone. Michael J. West admires Mary Halvorson‘s writing—-which is to say nothing of her acrobatic guitar-playing. David Dunlap Jr. thinks the new record by Dark Dark Dark is a little too somber somber somber. And in One Track Mind, Mike Kuntz digs into the latest 7-inch from Screen Vinyl Image.

In City Lights: Louis Jacobson reviews “Flow” at Irvine Contemporary and “Slow Road to China” at the Landon School. Plus! Jukebox the Ghost, Martin Sexton, Mike Reed, Let the Right One In, and Guillermo Kuitca speaks at the Hirshhorn.