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NEON INDIAN - Terminally Chill/Ephemeral Artery medley (2010)
I couldn’t’ve cared less when Jimmy Fallon got Conan O’Brien’s old 12:35 gig last year, but somewhere along the way I’ve been schooled, big-time. The last 10 minutes of Jimmy’s show has become a parade of left-field faves, and it’s apparent the host’s Shazam application played a large part in the booking process.
Kings Of Convenience were booked to play Late Night With Jimmy Fallon on February 11, 2010, but bailed due to illness, so Fallon got on his iPhone and lined up Austin’s Neon Indian, a genius move that put a way underground, synth-led, noise-pop band on national television, giving them a boost they might otherwise never have received. And they responded with this super clip.
Craftily cut ‘n’ pasting two of debut album Psychic Chasm’s best songs into a medley, the live incarnation of Neon Indian (otherwise a one-man studio project) is definitely meatier, but no less gloriously skewed. Neon Indian was a late entry in my 2009 record-of-the-year sweepstakes, and it’s been hot from the word go. Something about the knotty, early-’80s synth-funk keyboard lines really appeals, but the writing and fuzzy production sells it: in parts, Psychic Chasms recalls one of those ah-ha! YouTube moments when you call up some half-forgotten Saturday morning “youth programming” show, only to realize the incidental music kicked ass. The Neon Indian bonus is these are fragments that play like full songs, colliding or morphing into a very likeable whole. The Fallon “medley” bridges with a heavy feedback section that might be the weirdest thing NBC’s aired in awhile. It’s not enough to make up for screwing Conan, but in Jimmy we can trust.
(Fallon is still mispronouncing song and album titles and calling everyone “buddy” or “pal” - which can be amusingly dorky, as in when greeting Morrissey last spring, or Neon Indian’s cutie-pie keyboardist Leanne Macomber - but I’m giving him lots of leeway so long as the last minutes of his show remain so must-see T.V.)
While you’re grooving to my pet band of 2010, check out the cat in the hammerhead face mask in the group of fans behind the drummer. What the fuck?
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MORRISSEY - Black Cloud (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon; March 23, 2009)
“Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. Thank you, buddy!”
Herein: The Jimmy addresses Morrissey as “buddy.”
For certain fellow cross-border travellers - you know who you are, hiSofi and Doctor -a golden opportunity to digest Moz’ second American T.V. performance during this spring’s “Years Of Refusal” tour.
I don’t know if the label’s got plans to release this to radio in North America - it’s not the new single in the U.K. at any rate - but Steve gives it a good reading and Matt Walker, one of his better drummers, gets a lot of screen time.
Can’t promise this’ll stay up forever; another Moz-Fallon clip was removed inside of a day, so get going. And I’m not burning a DVD for just one song, mateys.
