A roundup of new videos from St. Louis bands (and one premiere via Chicago)

It might be a matter of like attracting like, but as soon as we posted about the new(ish) Songday Afternoon video series from the St. Louis Media Integration Center, a spate of recent St. Louis-based videos came to our attention. Today, we’ll give you a survey of what’s being produced around town these days, as well as some odd connections to the local market. That said, we’ll aim a few hours north for the first video, which is getting, yes, a world premiere here today.

The Great Crusades, “Gutter Punks” (Swede Films)

The Great Crusades have been a Chicago band for their entire existence, but they began life as an offshoot of the Suede Chain, a Collinsville-bred group (who are making their own, very intriguing, predictive Facebook posts of late). The GCs, meanwhile, have a new release on the way, Until the Night Turned to Day, on their longtime home of Mud Records. That label shoots us this preview info:

The Great Crusades’ ninth studio album, Until the Night Turned to Day, saw its first daylight in a beer-soaked rehearsal room at Chicago’s Superior Street center. The four longtime band members, Brian Hunt (bass, vocals), Brian Krumm (vocals, guitar), Brian Leach (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Christian Moder (drums, keyboards, vocals) booked two days at the space and proceeded to simply play as they do best—in live rock band mode. They recorded all the raucous results, and, weeks later, started combing through. The band then used the live “jams” to construct songs and record them with surprisingly vivacious results. The final result is a new record inspired by the twilight hours that combines the best of the band’s wide-ranging influences, from Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith and Pixies on the harder rocking side to Glen Campbell and The Jayhawks on songs that veer more into Americana territory. The lyrics find Krumm and company in vivid storytelling mode, with forays and shenanigans in Berlin, Boston, Chicago and Galway spilling forth. Krumm also takes on the current political atmosphere with a sour taste in his mouth on songs such as “Little Crown,” “King of the Altered States” and others. In many ways, Until the Night Turned to Day feels like a cross-country drive to the California coast, telling tales and singing about today, tomorrow, yesterday and the great beyond.

The band will be performing at the Bootleg at Atomic Cowboy, this Saturday, November 11 at 8:30; it’ll be their St. Louis release show for the album. You can get a good sense of their songwriting from this sharp-looking cut.

Amir, “Handgarden in Heaven” (Louis Quatorze)

The latest video from Louis Quatorze/Mike Roth is Amir’s “Handgarden in Heaven.” Roth says that “this was shot at the Ebony Tusks show at Blank Space in October; as well as in midtown, shot in one night over three hours. The video is about the transcendence of music and how it can transform people from the physical into ideas. Particularly, how Amir is able to escape the physical trappings of flesh and fly through his music; there are no restraints when you are free through your artistic expression.”

Roth says his “next video is with J’Demul for his first single off of his upcoming mixtape ‘Downtown Certified.’ The track is called ‘Pair of Dice,’ and the video is about how America creates fences to prevent certain types of people from achieving upward mobility.”

But, first, Amir:

Lords of Acid, “Crabhouse” (STL Music Video Preservation Project)

Here’s an odd duck. We’ll go ahead and link up a video to Lords of Acid’s “Crabhouse,” shot at the old Mississippi Nights way back in 1995. The video was converted from tape-to-digital by Rob Wagoner, who was on a tear for a couple of years, bringing a host of St. Louis bands from the ‘90s back to “life” on the web. A series of computer mishaps put that project on ice. Recently, though, he was asked to post a video of the aforementioned Lords of Acid, for the purposes of a very-active Facebook group, dedicated to Mississippi Nights, and, in doing so, he’s gotten the itch (and the technical capability, again) to start posting videos from old cable shows like “Critical Mass” and “Velocity” among others.

Among the first groups to be converted into the digital world: Ultrafink and Chicken Truck. For those to spring to life, we have to thank this cut by Lords of Acid:

Sorry, Scout, “Great Modern Homes” (Live in the Murder Room)

The video series that’s closest in spirit to Songday Afternoon may just be Live in the Murder Room, a concept helmed by Langen Neubacher, the songwriter of The Defeated County. She’s been recording some bands in a slender, slightly-sinister space in her home, the namesake Murder Room. It’s “a music video series I started where I film local and touring bands playing semi-acoustic songs in this creepy, little, all-white-and-rust room in the basement of my house. It has the strangest look and coolest creepy natural acoustics!

“It is a really, really fun project,” she enthuses. “Kristeen Young and the Please Please Me are the first touring bands I got in, because I was playing shows with both of them, but I am getting contacted by more touring bands now and that is fun, too.” The core of the performances to date, though, “are local. I try to do one every week but have been really busy the past little while so it’s been more like two-a-month.”

We’ll feature a band making its debut on Thursday, Nov. 9 at the Monocle: Sorry, Scout will appear with L.S. Xprss, with an 8:30 start time and free admission.

Whoa Thunder, “Hop To It” (Blip Blap Films)

Brian McClelland’s a busy beaver, tackling as many video projects as he can, while working an emotionally-taxing day (and night) job as an emergency response call center operator. He throws his own band, Whoa Thunder onto the web this week, with “Hop to It,” the first single from the EP “The Depths of the Deep End.”

McClelland says that videos from all of the following are currently in production: Lida Una, John Henry, Clownvis Presley, Curtis J & Sarah Vie, Todd Sarvies. First, though, his band’s cut:

Haley Michelle Jones & Benniegh Fowler, “Jelly Belly” (Songday Afternoon)

Since we started out the piece with a nod to last week’s blog post on Songday Afternoon, we’ll go ahead and wrap it up with the latest from the new(ish), weekly webcast.