Check out The National on The Late Show with David Letterman. Somewhat surprisingly, they performed “Conversation 16” which I’d say is one of the lesser known tracks off of their critically acclaimed album High Violet.
It’s cool to see the Arcade Fire’s Richard Parry perform along with them. You can see him in the back with long, red hair.
After another dreadfully monotonous day of assembling glasses for 8 hours, I routinely flipped on XMU channel 26 on Sirius Satellite Radio to hear the groggy and pleasingly apathetic voices of Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner of The National.
For this week only, these guys will be hosting an hour-long show at 5 p.m. with replays at 11 p.m. everyday. They hand pick tracks off of their latest album High Violet as well as goodies from older stuff. Digging a little deeper, Berninger and Dessner also rotate some music that influenced their slowly but surely rise to indie rock fame.
[caption id=”attachment_3239” align=”aligncenter” width=”565” caption=”Alice Glass of Crystal Castles”]
Experimental electronica duo Crystal Castles’ self-titled second album was released just last month to critical acclaim, and with good reason. It’s easily one of my favorite albums of the year, on par with Broken Bells’ self-titled debut, Broken Social Scene’s Forgiveness Rock Record, and The National’s High Violet. Tracks like “Doe Deer,” “Empathy,” “Vietnam,” “Intimate,” and “Celestica” have been on repeat on my iPod for the last 30 days.
The Canadian duo’s latest music video for “Celestica” has just been released. It features lead singer Alice Glass taking a leisurely stroll through a forest and eventually an overgrown cemetery during the day. A little strange and eerie, but then again, I’ve seen worse.
I’m no expert here. I’m simply and honestly telling you the songs that I loved this past year - polls, charts, blogs, magazines aside. I avoided adding/removing songs just to reach some practical number, so there are only 24.
Here we go with the very subjective and biased Top 24 Songs of 2009!
