This Week in Video: Hairy, Tattooed Guys Singing Pretty Songs Edition

It's resurrection time. Since I'm the only Rockist currently in DC yet the 2nd most frequent poster, it's time to get serious...

Speaking of serious: does anyone else find the first 30 seconds of this video creepy? C'mon, a kid in the middle of nowhere gets into a dark van just rolling down the road? "Hey kid. Do you like candy?" By the way, alpacas are cute (and are not llamas)...

Grand Archives - "Miniature Birds"

You can always count on Sub Pop for good music. Here's video #2 of theirs for the week.

Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal"

Although a little more than a week old, I figured, "Why not make it a trifecta of Sub Pop videos?" Here's one of the best opening lines to a song... not much of a video, though. It says, "Hey, our lives our better than yours. Have fun at the office, bitches."

Band of Horses - "No One's Gonna Love You"

Another One Bites The Dust

Last week our very own G.H. got engaged to his sweetheart, and indie rock aficionado, J.C. My apologies to the lady fans of TRS.

The rest of us at TRS extend our congratulations to the couple.

Drive-By Truckers - "Marry Me (live)"

NOTE: The ring pictured is not the ring given... G.H. has more taste than that.

Robert Schneider @ Morris Book Shop (Lexington, KY)

You Ain't No Picasso and some local Kentucky publications alerted me to a little solo, in-store set from Apples in Stereo leader Robert Schneider today in Lexington, my place of birth. The Morris Book Shop was having its big opening, complete with heavily iced cupcakes, cinnamon cookies, a massive bowl of colored goldfish crackers, tubs of Coke and Ale-8-One (a local ginger drink delicacy), and, natch, indie rock.

Quite the family affair, and Schneider seemed more than willing to oblige the soft-drink-sipping tikes with a loose set that included songs about lost ducks, dogs finding a way home, liking vegetables, and the usual Newton-for-Dummies that peppers the Apples catalog. That's not a complaint -- Schneider and his band have carved a large niche in my personal record collection doing just that, albeit with plenty of psych flourishes and double-backbeats. He was pretty engaging and goofy, waving hi to all the kids and trying to explain what "Tin Pan Alley" was about in terms they might understand.

He also did a fair number of Apples' classics, including a spare "Strawberryfire" (surprise there), and closed with a flurry of tunes from their last proper full-length, New Magnetic Wonder: "Skyway", "7 Stars", "Sun is Out", and "Energy". He also even broke one out from his underrated Ulysses project, "Evening Star".

Apparently the rest of the Apples arrive in the Bluegrass tomorrow to prepare for their upcoming jaunt. They won't be hitting DC, but they do have a number of other dates around the country, many with fellow Lexingtonians Big Fresh. Check them out.

Radiohead - 1995 - Live on Jools Holland

Our collective appreciation of Radiohead's DC stop (weather notwithstanding) was well-documented, but sitting at my parents house scanning their cable on-demand freebies, I came across a Jools Holland performance from 1995.  They were on with the artist formerly known as Declan MacManus and Chris Isaak (funnier than he is, err, good at music?), and later did "High and Dry" with a sweet Johnny solo, but this take on "The Bends" is about as blistering as indie rock gets.  Observe: