Thank god Vampire Weekend played Conan last night, that guy hasn’t been in the headlines for ages now. Just kidding, shit is bananas over there. It’s interesting how moving Leno to 10PM didn’t kill NBC’s drama programming so much as shift it to late night, where it don’t belong. But, you know, old habits. Videogum’s been covering NBC’s reactionary and plot-losing Tonight Show stratagems better than anyone on the web, but in case you missed Conan’s embittered yet hilarious monologue last night (and all the other talk show hosts’, as it turns out), watch here. It was straight fire; NBC, ya burnt.
An hour into the show came Vampire Weekend, the only band whose Google Alerts are competing with CoCo’s this week, indulging in the media saturation that comes with releasing another set of uncannily charming pop songs. “Cousins” was their song of choice for The Tonight Show, curious because they just did it just last week for Letterman (who gets higher ratings!)(until after the Olympics at least!). But they gave Conan a little something special with a string section, a bells section, and confetti. (Still no tape art.) That’s nice of them, because Conan loves these guys. And it’s mutual.
The band had that string and horn section in tow when they swung into the KCRW studios for this Morning Becomes Eclectic session:
I think ur aware Contra is out. VW play an ice rink on Thursday. Hockey photo above by Dale May for TONY.
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Way to highlight the superiority of the sound on Letterman’s show by playing the same song. The sound was terrible!
If anyone is interested in one specific song from the KCRW session, there are individual clips on YouTube.
Why the Strokes-y distortion on the vocals? Sounds pretty much awful.
Death to the Goats of Guadalajara!
Contra was really obviously made on a futuristic version of Microsoft Songsmith.
1ish…That would have been too late to wait for a good musical guest…They overlook that it’s nice to see music on a TV still!…
Is Rostam wearing a Xx shirt?
Team Conan
Agreed. (and fuck Leno).
Most of the song was meh but the ending was pretty badass.
I like the vocal “distortion” (it’s really slight, anyway). The Letterman performance was better, sure, but this was still really good, and the added instrumental accoutrements were pretty awesome (even if ‘Cousins’ is pretty straightforward).
In any case, I’m really looking forward to the album. I don’t really understand all the backlash, though I guess that’s just the nature of the beast.
Contra is by FAR the best Paul Simon record since Rhythm of the Saints.