Modest Mouse on Carson Daly (thanks, Elliott). Given that pre-"Float On" I'd never have defined myself as a big Modest Mouse fan (although I really enjoy Moon and Antarctica), the jury's still out on this one. Passionate and punchy, but seems a bit po-faced. On record, might be v. good, might be a bore: April 6 can't come soon enough.
Sufjan Stevens - "Seven Swans". By far the best track on Sufjan's upcoming album of the same name. So much of Seven Swans is merely pretty - the instrumentation is much simpler than on Michigan, the lyrics even more abstract. The stakes feel low, the ambition reined. But this! I don't really care what this song is about (God, presumably), but what gets me is the danger in it, the beauty-fear, the premonition of the sublime, the awesome, that cues in with the bare guitar at 3:32 (and then is followed through with the tremble-excitement-terror in Sufjan's voice). It doesn't hurt, of course, that "Seven Swans" finishes up with an epic, straining, march of the valkyries finale. "Seven swans, seven swans," he calls, a small, resigned voice amid the stormwash of piano, choir, drums. I admire that he takes his time to get there: Stevens sets the stage, and then blows through it, a torrential (beautiful) transformation.