I was personally outraged that after the ball dropped on 2009, NBC denied Conan his chance to do his Central Time Zone New Year celebration on his last year on Late Night (Blagojevich would have been great as this year's Bartman). I'll guess we'll have to settle for him going out the New York way, with The Walkmen performing "In The New Year" on his show Monday night. "In The New Year" was about one of 20 songs last year seen as the "definitive election year rock song," but now that Obama is in office, lines like "We won in a landslide" and "it's going to be a good year" have acquired an extra layer or two. In a leather jacket for the Conan gig, Hamilton Leithauser looks older and less ghoulish than he did in the music video for the song, but he also sounds grainer, more worn out, and more confident. He ain't Dylan or Cohen yet, but if he keeps killing his voice like this he may well be soon.

Also, as Prefix first discovered in 2002, Leithauser is actually taller than Conan.

Watch The Walkmen on Conan O'Brien (skip to chapter 5).