Arcade Fire win the Album of the Year Grammy

I skipped the Grammys this year — this Netflix queue’s not going to watch itself — but, hey, Arcade Fire won Album of the Year! That it was for an album that pales in comparison to Funeral (or comparable albums from last year by the Radio Dept., Spoon, etc.) is beside the point. Before tomorrow’s onslaught of think-pieces: dudes won because Eminem and Gaga are scary, Katy Perry’s a cartoon and nobody’s ever actually listened to Lady Antebellum. They play guitars and write their own songs. In retrospect, pretty obvious, right?

On a broader note: there are essentially three tiers of music consumption right now: the dwindling radio-pop mainstream, the explosively expanding NPR-TwilightGossip Girl-Coachella demographic and the Internet-only Best New Music/blogosphere nerds. Tiers 1 and 2 have been on a massive collision course since Garden State: tonight, they crashed right into each other in a Hipster Runoff-shaped mushroom cloud. Make of it what you will. But: hey, more money for Merge Records to give to Destroyer!

(Also: I interviewed the band’s Richard Reed Parry at Canada’s Grammy party last week. Really nice guy.)