Noted

The first of two Incredibly Important Musical Events that happened over the weekend, (the other being Madonna’s Super Bowl half-time performance, which I have not watched yet but which my mom in Wisconsin called to tell me “started out kind of whatever but then became sort of mesmerizing”). 

This is Bon Iver doing ‘Beth/Rest’ on SNL. It was the second song they performed on the show (the first being Holocene). The track a bit of a non-sequiter in the Bon Iver catalog, (although it makes tangential sense if you’ve listened to anything from the Vernon/Solid Gold/Other People I Can’t Remember Now collabo supergroup outfit Gayngs. ((And if you haven’t, listen to this right now and prepare to feel sexy)).

The LA Times’ very fine music blog Pop & Hiss remarked that the song, ”sounded like a deconstructed version of Don Henley’s “End of the Innocence,” a retro, synth-pop exercise rather than a song.”

And to this I say, what’s wrong with that? ‘End of the Innocence’ is a fucking killer track. When I was a kid, I would listen to it on cassette while I played with my Barbie dolls, and they always ended up slow dancing.