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Friday Cheer with Janelle Monáe

Courtney Ferguson — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:44:07 -0700

Sigh. Everyone went to see Star Trek into Darkness and I'm stuck Googling the correct spellings of various dried Italian meats. I'm going to watch my own futuristic space opera with Janelle Monáe's new song "Q.U.E.E.N." from her upcoming album Electric Lady. That'll cheer me up. It'll work for you too, I bet. She has that effect.

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Video Vriday! Minus 5, Toxic Holocaust, Typhoon, Black Prairie, & Rare Monk

Ned Lannamann — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:29:13 -0700

How vantastic, it's Video Vriday! This week we've got some videos and some non-videos. I'll explain.

Here's a video that's sort of a non-video, by which I mean it's a visual accompaniment to the Minus 5's new song, a nine-minute epic about Michael Nesmith. Wait, the same Michael Nesmith who appeared in the paper this week? Who was a member of the Monkees and has a long and illustrious solo career, only part of which involved music? The same Michael Nesmith who produced Repo Man and inherited the Liquid Paper fortune? The very same. The Minus 5's Scott McCaughey turned a lengthy poem about Nesmith into this song, which treats Papa Nez as the somewhat mythical character he is, imbuing him with everyman humanity, imagining what it might have been like to have been risen to the ridiculous heights of fame that the Monkees reached, and how you sort your life out after something like that. Michael Nesmith performs TONIGHT at the Aladdin Theater; I don't know if Portland will get another chance to see him.

More videos and non-videos after the jump! Click to watch Toxic Holocaust, Typhoon, Black Prairie, and Rare Monk.

• • •

Carrying the non-video theme for one more song, here is the brand-new "lyric video" for Portland thrash metal band Toxic Holocaust. Now, a lyric video is often a cheap ploy to get a band's new song on YouTube without actually having to film an expensive video. But this one looks pretty legit to me, a full cinematic (and spooky) accompaniment to "Agony of the Damned," with some lyrics so you can sing along karaoke-style. This track comes from Toxic Holocaust's forthcoming rarities anthology, From the Ashes of Nuclear Destruction, which comes out Tuesday on Relapse Records. An earlier version of "Agony of the Damned" appeared on TH's Conjure and Command, which was your mother's favorite album of 2011.

• • •

Here's a more conventional video-video, shot to honor Fort George's new Tender Loving Empire Northwest Pale Ale—named after the local label/boutique that's become a stronghold of Portland music. The Astoria brewery made a beer for TLE, and now Typhoon have made a video for the beer! (And now I'm making a blog post for the video. If someone would like to make me something, that would be nice.) This lovely clip sees Typhoon performing on the banks of the Willamette at night, performing the oldie "Sea Shanty II," which originally appeared on their 2007 EP Dearborn Sessions. The omnipresent Into the Woods folks are responsible for this one, and more music videos from Radiation City, Y la Bamba, and Brainstorm, made for Tender Loving Empire Northwest Pale Ale are on the way. Which doesn't change the fact that there is none of this beer in my mouth right now. A problem. It shall be rectified soon. (ALSO! Tender Loving Empire just made you a new mixtape. Go and listen.) (ALSO ALSO! The beer gets a local launch party, or release show, or something, at Bunk Bar on May 4.)

• • •

Last week Black Prairie appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and it took a few days, but now the video is up for viewing so you don't have to scroll through the whole episode on NBC's site just to see these goods. It's a fine take on "Nowhere, Massachusetts," including Jon Moen on drums, and a solo from Chris Funk on what I think—I'm no expert—is some sort of hammered dulcimer set up with a keyboard rig. It's either that or an ocarina. I know nothing about music!

• • •

Lastly, here's one from the Portland based Rare Monk, for the song Underground off their new album Sleep/Attack. This is a striking clip about what looks like a virtual reality experiment gone horridly wrong. OR maybe one of those sensory deprivation tanks? There are worms, and bodies rising from the earth, and an animated bird, and floating nude men, and if I told you I knew what was happening here, I would be a big ol' liar. Still, pretty! The clip was directed by Dylan Wilbur, and is a fine visual accompaniment to the band's dramatic, unusual indie-rock sound.

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It's Video Vriday! Eat Skull and More

Ned Lannamann — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:29:10 -0800

It's Video Vriday, everybody's vavorite day of the week!

First up is the weird—truly weird—video from Eat Skull, for the skittering, wrong-way-against-the-grain pop number "How Do I Know When to Say Goodnight?" I'm not entirely sure what's happening in this one, but it's shot on 82nd Avenue on a particularly grim Portland day, and totally captures that oppressive, morose feeling of a Northwest winter. There are little colored pieces of animation in there, too, so there you go. It's a little bit spooky and sad, and perhaps is meant to evoke that morning-after sense of coming down. Eat Skull play III's record release show tonight at Mississippi Studios.

More after the jump!

• • •

Here's a relatively recent (unofficial) video for Typhoon's "The Sickness Unto Death," the last track on their 2010 album Hunger and Thirst. Animated by Micah C. Gardner, it's a visually striking piece that gets a lot of mileage out of its newspaper imagery. I particularly like the idea of an obituary being folded into a paper boat and set adrift. Typhoon just wrapped the final mix and master of their much-anticipated new record, which will be in our hands and ears before long, but it can't come soon enough—this new video for an old song will just have to tide us over.

• • •

Here's the first installment of Into the Woods' four-part series with Parenthetical Girls, in which the band performs at obscure and hard-to-find places around the Portland area. Episode 1 sees the group climbing aboard an abandoned riverboat-turned-restaurant, the River Queen (formerly the S.S. Shasta), which is sitting in a heap off Hwy 30 near Goble, Oregon. This is a pretty insane idea, and it's hilarious to see Parenthetical Girls perform their poised pop in such a junky setting—everything looks cold and wet and terrible. The band's new full-length, Privilege (Abridged)—culled from their recent 5-EP series—came out earlier this week on Marriage Records, and Parenthetical Girls performs at Holocene on Wednesday, March 6.

• • •

Southerly is celebrating its 12th anniversary with a new single, "Desolation Low," and here's the video for the roiling, shoegazing tune. The impressionistic video remains dark and mysterious even as the song ramps up to sky-high heights. "Desolation Row" is coming out shortly on 7-inch and is also available for download over on Bandcamp; in the meantime, Southerly has prepared a retrospective playlist to celebrate its 12th anniversary. They're also playing Wednesday, March 6 at Backspace.

• • •

Lastly, here's a video with kind of a weird story behind it. The Portland film company Americonic Films made a video for a New York songwriter, who decided not to use it. The filmmakers were bummed, as they were proud of the work, so they then used the footage to accompany a tender song from tender local songwriter Tyler Stenson; all parties agree that the visuals ended up fitting the song surprisingly well. So they intercut some footage of Stenson and his drummer wandering around town, and voila! Music video made.

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It's Video Vriday! New Wild Ones and More

Ned Lannamann — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:29:35 -0800

We did this before! We're doing it again! Portland videos from Portland bands for Portland people.

To begin with a bang, here's a new song and video from Wild Ones. Yes, new Wild Ones! (Yes!!) If the fact that there's a new Wild Ones song weren't exciting enough on its own, the video for "Golden Twin" is completely fantastic. Directed by Calvin Waterman and shot by Wild Ones' Clayton Knapp, it's sorta a cross between a James Bond credit sequence and the cover of Hot Rocks, and manages to find the inherent sexiness in both chainsaw art and Jurassic Park videocassettes. Yes! This is a great tune from Wild Ones, a mere taster for their new album Keep It Safe, which hopefully will come out in the late spring or early summer.

Yay, new Wild Ones! Let this be your very favorite thing today.

Lots more after the jump, including videos from Gossip, Pure Bathing Culture, Butt 2 Butt, Catherine Feeny, the Ecstatics, and A Killing Dove.

• • •

Gossip also have a new video, for "Get a Job" from their recent album A Joyful Noise. In the band's words, the song is "about all the rich kids we knew when we were younger, kids who never had jobs but always had money for partying or getting their hair done. We would come home from our fast food jobs in greasy clothes and they would have spent all their parents’ money on handbags and vodka.” The band also rattles off all the day jobs they had to work in their lives:

NATHAN: Mcdonalds, Burger King, Phone Psychic, Telemarketer, Custodian at the Evergreen State College, Mail order at K Records and at Kill Rock Stars, I'm a farmer now and there's no money in it.
HANNAH: Paper boy, Dishwasher at a German retirement home, Condom store employee, Dildo salesperson (this is real and was actually different than the condom store).
BETH: Bud’s Discount Warehouse, Wal Mart, Puff’s $12 Zoo, Sonic Burgers, Western Sizzlin’, A&W Hot Dogs, King’s Den Hair Dressers, Metro Clothing, Mrs. Powell’s Cinnamon Rolls, Tee’s Me, Subway, Coffee People, Black Cat Coffeehouse, Sharif’s Coffee, Torrid, I ran a hair salon out of my house, I can’t even remember all the jobs! Nathan called me the professional job destroyer.

• • •

Pure Bathing Culture was recently filmed in Seattle by Yours Truly; it's a point-blank video of the group performing "Ivory Coast" shot in tight close-ups, which is ideally appropriate for the intimacy of their music. While they played around town constantly last year, Pure Bathing Culture has been on the road elsewhere and don't have a Portland show coming up until May 25, when they open for Father John Misty—AKA Josh Tillman, who's PBC bassist Zach Tillman's brother—at the Wonder.

• • •

Here's one that's rough around the edges but I like all the same. It's the horribly named Portland band Butt 2 Butt, who I had never heard of until they sent me a link to their new record yesterday. Terrible name, really great band. This video was shot under a rain canopy at noon on a Sunday afternoon. You should listen to the group's really good new record; it's called My Bed, My Bitch and is proof that the band is no better at naming albums than themselves. It's over on Bandcamp and can be downloaded for free, and I'm serious, it is good. Butt 2 Butt (god, that name) play February 24 at Mississippi Pizza and March 7 at the Hawthorne Theatre Lounge.

• • •

I guess I am posting this a day late: Here is Catherine Feeny's video for "One Billion Rising," a song made for the One Billion Rising movement that culminated yesterday on Valentine's Day, to raise awareness that one in three women on the globe are victims of violence. Feeny wrote the song at the request of One Billion Rising founder Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) after the two met at an Occupy Wall Street protest. The song also includes musicians Nate Crockett (Horsefeathers), Daniel Dixon (Greylag), and Sam Adams (Sama Dams), and the video was directed by Liz Vice with effects by Jacob Shroades.

• • •

This isn't a brand new video, but it's a really catchy, likable song from Portland band the Ecstatics, who are "two dorky guys rocking out air-guitar style to the Wombats and Two Door Door Cinema Club in a Portland, OR basement," according to their Soundcloud page. There's also a new song, "Singapore," up on that page, and supposedly an EP coming next month; the Ecstatics open for Gold Fields at the Crystal Ballroom on February 25, and for And And And at Holocene on March 20.

• • •

Lastly, here's a video from A Killing Dove, a band not from Portland, but Vancouver, Washington. It's the title track for their forthcoming album Break the Formulaic, and here's some info provided about the making of the video:

"Break The Formulaic “ was shot in one day in the basement of the infamous Dove Manor in Vancouver WA. It was filmed on a budget that allowed for large quantities black plastic, masking tape, used televisions and some very creative and well planned shots. The piece features the title song from their second CD release “Break the Formulaic”.

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A Whole Bunch of Videos!

Ned Lannamann — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:44:00 -0800

As the week draws to a drowsy closezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz—sorry, I had a big lunch. But if you're like me, you're already feeling worn out, in spite of the holiday and the short week. So there's no better thing to do than to goof off and catch up on some local music videos!

First up is a live clip from Grandparents, filmed at the Banana Stand on May 19, 2012. That show is shortly to be released by Banana Stand Media as a live album, continuing their series of excellent work documenting Portland bands in the live setting. This is a beautifully shot clip (courtesy of Collective-47), and a dreamy, daze-y track from Grandparents. The track's titled "Fume," and there will be a release show for Grandparents' Live from the Banana Stand at Holocene on January 24.

Lots more to look at after the jump.

• • •

Here's one from a Portland band named Altadore, about whom I don't know a ton, other than that they're fronted by a fellow David Katz, and this is the clip for their first single, "Moments," which appears on their debut EP, Golden Hills. It's a pretty, swoony track with lush guitars and a confident, reassuring melody. The video is similarly meditative and autumnal.

• • •

The next is from Martin Eden, AKA Matthew Cooper of Eluvium, with a video for "Return Life," the concluding track to the Martin Eden album Dedicate Function. Director Eric Macey collaborated with Cooper to put together this compilation of 10 years of Macey's Super 8 rolls. The aim was "to create less literal memories and more visceral ones, matching the pulse and the fluctuations in the rolling shutter with the rhythm of the track." The result is a muted, beautiful pairing of sound and image.

• • •

Now here's Jeffrey D. Munger, guitarist for Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, plucking a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "If I Should Fall Behind" in his living room. This was shot by Matthew Ross of Neighborhood Films, who, two years back, also shot Kyle Morton (of Typhoon) and Danielle Sullivan (of Wild Ones) doing a cover of the Boss.

• • •

Here's a local guy named Jesse Layne (not to be confused with Jesse Laney of Portland band World's Greatest Ghosts), plucking the lovely "Love at a Standpoint" on a teeny-tiny guitar* (it's adorable!) on what looks like a rooftop. Layne plays the Someday Lounge tonight to celebrate the release of his new EP, Dreams and Past Lives.
*a tenor ukulele, maybe?

• • •

Lastly, here's one that I really can't explain. It's by Dwayne R33d, The Jay and Mobsta Bisq, a trio of female comedy rappers who apparently really like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats. They dropped this in the End Hits inbox, saying they're Portland-based and that they make "stupid music videos about stupid things." This certainly falls into that category; the track's called "YOLNT"—short for "You Only Live Nine Times"—and, well, uh. I guess just watch it. It's three cute ladies dressed up as cats, and it's at least better than "The Rum Tum Tugger."

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The Ocean Floor Wishes You a Merry Christmas

Ned Lannamann — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:28:49 -0800

The Ocean Floor—who we profiled in a recent issue—came up with a Christmas song and video for your holiday. It's a cover of "Toyland," from Victor Herbert's operetta Babes in Toyland, although you might remember the treacly 1961 movie starring Annette Funicello. There's a surreal but charming video to go along with it courtesy of animator Kurtis Hough, and it's a warm, nostalgic, buttery bit of Christmas cheer.

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I Was On "Spicy News" This Week and It Pretty Much Sucked

Alex Falcone — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:14:09 -0800

It did not occur to me that eating a habanero or two and then trying to tell topical jokes into a camera would be so... the worst.

I didn't really think much about it. I have my own late-night talk show (Late Night Action w/ Alex Falcone - season two starts in January!), so I know I can deliver the shit out of a topical monologue. I like spicy foods. I like being on YouTube. Boom. Easy. Sure, guys, I'll be on The Spicy News.

Here's something I didn't know: when you eat a whole habanero pepper it has a slight delay, like pulling the pin out of a capsaicin grenade. I thought maybe I was just too much of a man for this silly little pepper to affect me. In that moment, surrounded by the camera equipment and a room full of comedians I really wanted to impress, I thought my overwhelming manhood was getting in the way of my ability to be funny. I was so afraid I'd do a bad job that I ate a second pepper. And then they both punched me in my stupid mouth at the same time.

I barely got through the rest of the jokes, delivering a total of none of them with the aplomb I'd envisioned. The staff (Spicy News feels like it's produced by every comedian in Portland; there were something like 30 people in the studio) rushed in with a bowl of ice cream that did very close to nothing to curb the UNBELIEVABLE BURNING IN AND AROUND MY FACE.

Instead of being relieved it was over, I was enormously sad. I wasn't expecting that either. I think what happened was my eyes were watering so hard, my body thought we were crying. "What's that, eyes? Crying? Lots and lots? Shit, something way sad must have just happened. Come on, emotions, get your head in the game!" I was curled up on a chair hugging my ice cream and feeling super bummed about nothing in particular for 20+ minutes.

Here's something else I didn't know: habaneros don't just hurt your mouth. If you eat two in a row and don't do a great job of chewing them, you feel a small ball of firey pain moving slowly down your digestive track, hitting your stomach, and expanding to fill the entire thing.

Somebody asked me if I'd eaten dinner first. "You should eat a bunch beforehand so you don't get a stomachache. Also we usually have people eat a couple Tums before they start." These are both super helpful tips beforehand. They've done like 40 of these videos, and it didn't occur to one of the hundred staff members/groupies there to tell me this before I did the video.

I tell you all of this, dear friend, to let you know how much I've gone through in the last 24 hours in hopes of providing you even a smidgen of entertainment. If you don't watch this video and enjoy it heartily, it'll be like you personally kicked me in the stomach. Twice. So watch it. And if they ever ask you to be on the Spicy News tell them to shove their habaneros up their numerous asses.

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Robot Apocalypse Update: Lamps and Swords

Alex Falcone — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:29:41 -0800

If you think our future rulers will take us down swiftly, maybe with some kind of massive mind-control system or death ray, you're wrong. This guy is trying to make it so they enact their terrible mechanical reign using SWORDS. Unlike salad robot and noodle robot, there are no commercial applications to robots who fight with swords. Only fighting applications.

Even more frightening is this lamp created by three students from the University of Wellington.

Three terrifying things about this:

[1] College students did it. So it can't be that hard.

[2] The lamp doesn't like being turned off. Imagine that from a sword-fighting robot.

[3] It's kind of adorable. And it shouldn't be, because it's coming to kill us all.

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Mean Jeans "Possessed 2 Party (With U)"

Andrew R Tonry — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:53:43 -0700

Just in time for Halloween, the Mean Jeans film a video at Fright Town and prove once again why they are the Best Party Band in the Universe.

Das Was Up.

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Monday Music Videos

Ned Lannamann — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:14:18 -0700

A magical medley of Monday morning music mideos!... er, videos. (Also, it's afternoon now.)

The new M. Ward video, for "Me and My Shadow" from his recent A Wasteland Companion album, tells the story of a young, Bieberesque pop lad who tries to escape from the clutches of his evil, eye-laser-shooting manager, played by Amy Sedaris. Yes, that's a quick Conan O'Brien cameo, and the video was directed by Scott Jacobson, a writer for Bob's Burgers. I like the story and the images although it feels a little truncated, like there was a bigger story intended to cram into these two-and-a-half minutes.

"Between Parentheses" is a stop-motion clip from Cars & Trains, the nom de record of Tom Filepp. It's a fairly simple but striking video, made by Otem Rellik, and it follows some animated birds on the ground and in the trees, evoking the rhythms of nature. We'll have another Cars & Trains video premiere for you in the coming weeks.

Here's one from a Portland band new to me: De La Warr, whose song "Like a Drum" includes not only drums, but cascading guitar and inventive vocal harmonies. This video shows the members of the band being, uh, redecorated by a bunch of excited kids.

Lastly, here's a clip from the audio/visual Plink Flojd collective, started by Brazilian David Quiles Guillo and including Portlander Eric Mast (E*Rock). This musical piece and its computer generated video is from Brenna Murphy, and it'll throw off your center of balance a little bit. (Notice the reference to Pink Floyd's "Echoes" in the sound of the Leslie-speaker'ed piano.) Plink Flojd present a screening this Saturday at the Hollywood Theatre as part of the upcoming THE PROJECTS experimental art and comics fest this weekend. More about that in the upcoming Mercury.

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In The Summertime...

Andrew R Tonry — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:49:59 -0700

Alison had the right idea. She just chose the wrong video. Behold Mungo Jerry!

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Shia LaBeouf: Naked and Crying

Bobby Roberts — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 11:45:27 -0700

Man, Shia LaBeouf has decided now is the time to just Go There. I mean this in the classic artistic sense - leaping forward, blindly, trying things for the sake of trying them, exposing yourself in a manner that can be described in a multitude of ways, but "brave" above all. Typically, on these sorts of artistic journeys, nobody knows where there is until we arrive, and even then, there's no guarantee it will be a transcendent, beautiful place. It might just be 15 tons of pretentious recycled meat, thudding to the floor with a sound not unlike a deck of cards being shuffled into a bowl of pudding.

Below is a Not Safe For Work video from Sigur Ros, a band whose music is so effortlessly beautiful it is probably best known on the internet for eliciting tears as the score to a Super Mario Bros. advertisement. In this video, Shia LaBeouf does a bunch stuff like driving a cab, having sex with a blond person, crying in a room full of dead butterflies, and generally Going There. I'm sure LaBeouf took this job hoping to make some sort of statement about his own artistic intent, his artistic integrity, non-traditional storytelling, and the power of pure expression. And all that is well and good. But you're going to click play because you can see Shia LaBeouf's dick in it. Because, yo: LaBeouf dick.

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Ding

Erik Henriksen — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:55:07 -0800

This is an ad for Hill's Garbage Service in Hendersonville, North Carolina, made by Rhett and Link. I have watched it three times in the past 10 minutes.

Thanks to Katie for the heads up!

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Video: Hot Dog in Spaaaaace!

Sarah Mirk — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:27:35 -0800

Read the article about two Portlanders' quest to shoot a hot dog into space.

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Gorgeous Portland Time-Lapse Video

Sarah Mirk — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:44:58 -0800

I ran into this guy, Lance Page, in the middle of the night at Occupy a few weeks ago. He told me he was working on some project to make a time-lapse video of Portland, I gave him my card and forgot about it and then HOLY SHIT the final product arrived in my inbox. It's rad. Check it out:

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The Ramones on Oregon Cable TV in 1983

Ned Lannamann — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:59:43 -0700

Dangerous Minds put this up yesterday, and it's great. It's a 1983 episode of some wretched, low-budget cable TV show from Eugene, Oregon. While it's enjoyable enough to watch for its dated production values and awkward banter, there's a solid interview with Jonny and Dee Dee Ramone. The two come off great, while both interviewers just look like airheads. A time capsule of punk spirit butting up against the rest of the world. Just watch.

End Hits: "...like all the real people outside in the real world."

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Video: Sapient - "Inglorious Days"

Ned Lannamann — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:44:18 -0700

Here's the latest video from Sapient, and it's an exercise in restraint: Less than a minute and a half of music, one camera shot, minimally done, ending as all videos should end... with a Mario-esque videogame! Boing, boing, boing. The track is a reboot of "Glorious Day," which originally appeared on Sapient's Barrels for Feathers album from 2010. The emcee (also of the Debaser duo and that mighty Voltron of Portland hiphop, Sandpeople) has since released the Tusks album, which showcased his production skills through largely instrumental tracks. But here's this, a concise shot of rhymes and heavily bitsynth-indebted production.

End Hits: Also, new Chromatics vid, too!

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Portugal. The Man - "So American" (Live on Conan)

Ned Lannamann — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:22:00 -0700

It seems like Portugal. The Man are well on their way to greatness, which will come as a surprise to no one. Now labelmates with both Phil Collins and Cody Simpson (eeeeeeeeee!), their Atlantic Records debut In the Mountain In the Cloud has become a constant fixture on the FM airwaves, and the band just joined ranks with Team Coco by appearing on Conan last night. The band blazed through "So American" and looked pretty damn dapper doing it—the bright lights of not-quite-network TV suit them.

The only thing that would make this performance better is an appearance by the Masturbating Bear.

End Hits: In case you were wondering, Atlantic Records will NOT accept your demo via Twitter.

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Crock - "Eat Your Hat Out" (Video)

Ezra Ace Caraeff — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:08:14 -0700

Chomp down on your favorite biting block and watch this seizuretastic video from Crock. As you might recall, Crock is a collaboration between Sam Coomes (Quasi) and Spencer Seim (Hella), and their debut LP Grok will be released via Jackpot Records on September 27.

As for the video, um, well, it's the very first clip ever directed by Sam Coomes and there are bunnies in it. Just make sure you watch it with your safety buddy present, we don't want to see another Dennō Senshi Porygon.

End Hits: Paka Paka!

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Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - "Tigers" (Video)

Ezra Ace Caraeff — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:14:02 -0700

The latest video from Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks is for Mirror Traffic's second single "Tigers," and shockingly enough the clip features... wait for it... oh come on, you can wait for it... no, no, don't click away... TIGERS!

Sparky Anderson and Al Kaline? Um, no. This cute little clip centers around a man in a tiger suit (sorry to ruin the illusion) that gets into all sorts of adventures in the big city, much like a real tiger would if it escaped from the zoo. Or not.

End Hits: Cat noise!

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Wild Flag - "Romance" (Video)

Ezra Ace Caraeff — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 07:27:22 -0700

Wild Flag—the superduper group composed of Mary Timony, Carrie Brownstein, Janet Weiss, and Rebecca Cole—just premiered this video for "Romance," the first single from their self-titled debut (out next Tuesday).

The Tom Scharpling-directed clip shows the Wild Flag members as hard-working corporate women who just so happen to don plastic Halloween masks and run amok in Portland—Jackpot Records, the dog park, Doug Fir, etc.—in their free time. It's like a wacky, local version of Point Break. But without the surfing, bank robbing, or that steamy Patrick Swayze/Keanu Reeves sex scene (it's after the credits, duh).

End Hits: "100% pure adrenaline!"

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Labor Day Video Break

Sarah Mirk — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 10:24:36 -0700

These three videos have nothing in common except that they're all interesting and they're all a little too long to watch during a workday. GOOD THING IT'S STILL THE WEEKEND. woop woop.

1) What's it like being gay in rural America? A 12-minute documentary about gay pride in Montana.

2) The ever-charismatic East Portland State Representative Jefferson Smith waxing on for 17 minutes about reforming democracy.

3) Dance break! I feel like I don't understand much of what's going on in this video about a girl and her bicycle, but I like her style.

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Richmond Fontaine - "Lost in the Trees" (Video)

Ezra Ace Caraeff — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:12:33 -0700

I'm not gonna lie, we were pretty damn excited to hear that Richmond Fontaine had returned with a new album. Due out September 20, The High Country is a conceptual recording—or, as they call it, a "song-novel concept album"—that takes full advantage of frontman Willy Vlautin's gift for writing (sad) stories about fascinating (and sad) characters. Shockingly, the album has no songs about Vlautin's other favorite topics: Reno, horses, drunk jockeys, and a drunk Reno jockey who rides a horse that has a gambling problem.

Come on Mr. Cinnamon, you always split aces! Stupid horse.

Anyway, back to the video. True to its title, this clip for "Lost in the Trees" pieces together (via hazy flashbacks) a particularly harrowing night of heavy partying deep in the woods. It's a bit creepy, so don't watch this if you are about to head into the wilderness for a weekend camping trip.

End Hits: Can someone mash this song up with Kanye's "Lost In The World"?

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The Decemberists - "Calamity Song" (Video)

Ezra Ace Caraeff — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 07:18:32 -0700

The Decemberists' latest video was directed by... Mose Schrute?!? Michael Schur (former writer/producer of The Office, and current mastermind behind Parks and Recreation—plus the genius responsible for the greatest sports blog ever, Fire Joe Morgan) was behind the lens for this clip to The King is Dead's "Calamity Song."

The video is a homage to David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I have yet to read—Oh, why doesn't anyone make a video in tribute to my favorite book?—so I won't pretend to know what is exactly happening here. Tennis? It's about tennis, right?

h/t: NPR

End Hits: Björn Bored.

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Soft Metals - "Voices" (Video)

Ezra Ace Caraeff — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 07:03:25 -0700

I like my metal soft—then again, perhaps not—and I like Soft Metals, the slinky keyboard duo/couple that is gaining plenty of momentum on their The Cold World Melts EP and more recent self-titled LP. Released by Captured Tracks, the LP centers around the wondrous "Vocals," which is a pleasant coincidence since that track now has a video to call its own.

The Christian Petersen-directed clip was inspired by Dario Argento and features "a kind of isolated, supernatural misfit." Jerry Only?

End Hits: But we're the Misfits/Our songs are better...

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