A couple of months ago, the National’s Matt Berninger released Serpentine Prison, his first-ever solo album. In recent weeks, Berninger has sung songs from that LP on shows like CBS This Morning and Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. You’d think that Berninger would still be in straight-up album-promo mode. But last night, in his capacity as musical guest on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, Berninger went left. Rather than singing one of his own songs, he twitched and growled his way through a cover of the Velvet Underground’s 1967 classic “I’m Waiting For The Man.”

When Jimmy Fallon introduced Berninger, he said that “I’m Waiting For The Man” comes from Serpentine Prison. It does not. (If you ever meet Jimmy Fallon, you should definitely make fun of him for this. He will definitely get upset about it.) Berninger is, of course, a longtime Velvet Underground fan. He recently told Uncut that he recorded a cover of “European Son” for Serpentine Prison, though it didn’t make the cut.

On Fallon, Berninger and his band turned the sparse, nasty original into something prettier and more florid. (It makes me think of Berninger heading up to Harlem, waiting for someone to covertly sell him a big bottle of red wine.) In the clip, we see Berninger and his band playing in some kind of rehearsal space. There’s a yellow filter over everything, and whoever filmed it went the Paul Greengrass shaky-cam route, perhaps to better dramatize Berninger’s sometimes-erratic live presence. Watch the performance and listen to the Velvet Underground original below.

Serpentine Prison is out now on Book Records. Read our We’ve Got A File On You interview with Berninger here.