| Like Tenacious D, but considerably funnier, Flight of The Conchords are a comedy duo that balance their humor with their music. From a musical standpoint, their work is unremarkable, but solid. To a degree, the band has developed their own sound, but because they are working in parody, they are extremely limited in what they can do. To support their humor, Flight of the Conchords sacrifice art to exploit musical clichés. They do a song that is inspired by the French New Wave of the 1960s (“Foux Du Fafa”), they work in R&B (“Ladies Of The World”), they play the role of sensitive rockers doing a guitar ballad (“A Kiss Is Not A Contract”), and they even touch on World Rock (“Prince of Parties”). Their treatment of this is self-referential, and this makes the parodies even funnier. For example, in the song, “Boom,” a cheesy 80s Dub Pop song, McKenzie quickly commands, “I need my 1987 DJ-20 Casio Electric Guitar, set to mandolin”, immediately before the instrument is played.
The songs work on a basic level because of catchy choruses and addictive verses. Almost every song on the album is fun and hooky. Robots, with the infectious chorus of ”The humans are dead / the humans are dead” moves into a well-timed melodic bridge, (the ”binary solo”), before ending with an equally addictive ”robo-boogie” outro. The song will get stuck in the listeners head like a virus on a hard drive.
If the music is adequate, the comedy is outstanding. “Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenocerous”, one of the standout tracks on the album, introduces the artists under their Hip-Hop personas. Every line of this track is hilarious, and every lyric hits with tight delivery; “My rhymes are so potent that in this small segment / I made all of the ladies in the area pregnant. / yea, sometimes my lyrics are sexist / but you lovely bitches and hoes should know that I’m trying to correct this”
The wit and delivery makes this work as well as it does. The comedic timing of Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement is dead on. A Good example of this would be the opening line of “The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)” where the duo harmonize the line, “Looking on the room / I can tell that you / are the most beautiful girl in the /…room / (in the whole wide room)”. The line is strong, the delivery is impeccable.
The songs are good. The comedy is brilliant. The main problem with this release is that, aside from a few tweaks here and there, everything here has been heard before. And yet some of The Flight of The Conchords’ best material, like the poppy “If You’re Into It”, or the Beatles-esque ballad “Pencils in the Wind”, are absent.
In all likelihood, if you are a fan of the band, you have already purchased this album and it is already on your iPod. But if you are unfamiliar with The Flight of The Conchords, I would recommend starting with the DVD and then moving to the CD/Mp3. Reviewed
by: Richie Corelli
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