Flight of the Conchords I Told You I Was Freaky

In the Flight of the Conchords 2005 BBC Radio 2 series, “Bernard from EMI” was a four-minute sketch and the gags came rapid-fire. Two years later, the same sketch was dragged out to a 22-minute episode—and, oddly, it was funnier. It’s characterization that defines their brand of comedy—whether it’s the sleazy, misplaced cockiness of Business Time or, more often, the self-conscious, fumbling uncertainty of If You’re Into It or Robots. It seems the longer they have to establish their characters’ personas, the subtler their jokes get and the more nuanced their portrayal becomes—hence the difficulty of condensing the entire Conchords act into two-minute songs, and the paradox inherent in releasing what amounts to a soundtrack to the second season. 

First of all, do the songs even work without the accompanying TV show? Without the episodes’ context, it’s undeniable that a lot of the gags don’t make sense—Friends, in particular, with lines like “Friends make graphs together”, won’t provoke the same laughs among those unfamiliar with the latest season as with Conchords buffs. Moreover, though, something is missing from the songs without their respective videos. Sometimes it’s a key element—see Sugalumps’ elaborate man-whoreography—but more often it’s the relentless march of subtle visual gags—the omnipresent confused, elderly Asian ladies, the nerds and suits dancing chorus-line routines, or simply Bret and Jemaine’s many and varied facial expressions. 

So, are the new songs as good as the old ones? The one-gag songs—see You Don’t Have to Be a Prostitute, a Roxanne parody so blatant that Bret even borrows Sting’s ersatz Jamaican accent—show a distinct topical side of Bret and Jemaine that wasn’t present in their debut. “Weird Al” Yankovic-style spoofs are funny, sure, and listening to Bret list every imaginable synonym for “male prostitute” merits a chuckle, but the Conchords are less funny when focusing their comedic arsenal on one topic. Granted, the first season was a tough act to follow—especially given that some of those songs date back nearly a decade—but despite having left off weak numbers like Love is a Weapon of Choice entirely, cuts like Petrov, Yelyena and Me or Angels are bafflingly unfunny. However, duds like these are fairly rare, and, on the other hand, highlights like Sugalumps and Hurt Feelings alternate between the same attitudes of hesitant naiveté and deluded overconfidence that characterized season one. Perhaps the album’s best track is Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor, which show the Conchords branching out from characterization to include deft wordplay, delivered at blinding pace. 

Musically, I Told You I Was Freaky proves a marked change from the largely acoustic styles of their debut, showing the Conchords branching out even more into dance-inspired music (despite manager Murray’s scorn for the keytar). Whether it’s because they’ve put folk-parody solidly under their wings or because they’re simply reaching is irrelevant, although given how accomplished the transition was, most will be inclined to suppose the former. The musical integrity of their newfound dance-pop leanings propels not only standouts like Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor)—which could be a convincing club track if not for rhyming “hands” with “mans”—but also lyrically weaker tracks like Demon Woman. Conversely, the unconvincing melodies of Petrov, Yelyena and Me don’t do any favours for its one-off gags.

Obsessive fans might have noticed a slight alteration in the Flight of the Conchords’ billing recently. It’s well known that they’ve always called themselves “New Zealand’s fourth-most-popular guitar-based digi-bongo-acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo,” but lately they’ve been adding the word “formerly” before that tongue-twister. It’s a change that aptly reflects the global audience that they’ve found—an audience that was only broadened in their second season, and which this record will likely continue to enlarge. The truth is that, though they claim in character that their tribute band, “Like of the Conchords,” is both more popular and “slightly better” than them, I Told You It Was Freaky sees the Conchords exploring new directions, both musically and lyrically—and concocting their own unique brand of comedy all the while.