Far from a grin-and-bear-it novelty album, Flight Of The Conchords is a genuinely funny series of musical jokes that skewer and celebrate everything from French Pop to Hip-Hop to Jamaican Dancehall to David Bowie. This full length debut album fleshes out many of the songs featured in Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement’s popular HBO series, bringing a high buff production gloss to the duo’s nutty ideas.
Flight Of The Conchords has more in common with Ween’s Chocolate & Cheese (gifted musicians wickedly lampooning a variety of musical genres) than it does with traditional musical joke-peddlers such as Weird Al Yankovic, Barenaked Ladies, or They Might Be Giants. In other words, the tunes here aren’t just vehicles for jokes – in many cases they actually are the joke.
‘Robots’ – set in the distant future of the year 2000 – imagines a world run by party loving robots. ‘Prince Of Parties’ nails the hippy dippy didgeridoo sound of faux world music. ‘Hiphopopotamus Vs Rhymenoceros’ busts a hilarious cap into the carcass of rap convention. But the highlight of highlights here is ‘Bowie’, a three-minute musical encapsulation of David Bowie’s entire career. The Thin White Duke himself would be hard-pressed to resist the brilliance of this parody. In their best Ziggy Stardust/Major Tom voices, McKenzie and Clement drop lines like “Do you have one really funky sequined space suit, Bowie? Or do you have several ch-ch-ch-ch- changes?”
Not every song on Flight Of The Conchords hits the musical funny bone, but there are more than enough bright spots to make this album a very worthwhile investment of earspace. Consider yourself warned: the band that describes itself as “New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo” is on the prowl, and making some of the finest musical spoofery this side of Spinal Tap and The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band.
For those about to laugh, we salute you…
Listen: Bowie
Listen II: Robots
Tags: Bret McKenzie, David Bowie, Flight Of The Conchords, HBO, Instant Classic, Jemaine Clement
10 June 2008 at 8:03 am |
From an interview in this month’s Wired:
WIRED: Finally, which one of you is Hall and which is Oates?
McKenzie: I can’t decide. I am a huge Hall and Oates fan. We listed to a lot of their music in the studio while we were recording, trying to emulate their harmonies and doing a Hall vocal style. Hall was even a guest on our show – but I’m looking forward to meeting Oates.
WIRED: So, if you were on a lifeboat and only had room for one of them, who would you save?
Clement: I’d sacrifice myself to keep Hall and Oates going.
10 June 2008 at 12:04 pm |
P – Are you trying to pick another Hall and Oates fight? Instigator!
10 June 2008 at 2:01 pm |
Do you like Mongolian Beef? I do. Here’s how to make it:
Ingredients
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon ginger, minced
1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
vegetable oil, for frying (about 1 cup)
1 lb flank steak
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 large green onion
Directions
1-Make the sauce by heating 2 tsp of vegetable oil in a medium saucepan over med/low heat.
2-Don’t get the oil too hot.
3-Add ginger and garlic to the pan and quickly add the soy sauce and water before the garlic scorches.
4-Dissolve the brown sugar in the sauce, then raise the heat to about medium and boil the sauce for 2-3 minutes or until the sauce thickens.
5-Remove it from the heat.
6-Slice the flank steak against the grain into 1/4″ thick bite-size slices.
7-Tilt the blade of your knife at about a forty five degree angle to the top of the steak so that you get wider cuts.
8-Dip the steak pieces into the cornstarch to apply a very thin dusting to both sides of each piece of beef.
9-Let the beef sit for about 10 minutes so that the cornstarch sticks.
10-As the beef sits, heat up one cup of oil in a wok (you may also use a skillet for this step as long as the beef will be mostly covered with oil).
11-Heat the oil over medium heat until it’s nice and hot, but not smoking.
12-Add the beef to the oil and sauté for just two minutes, or until the beef just begins to darken on the edges.
13-You don’t need a thorough cooking here since the beef is going to go back on the heat later.
14-Stir the meat around a little so that it cooks evenly.
15-After a couple minutes, use a large slotted spoon to take the meat out and onto paper towels, then pour the oil out of the wok or skillet.
16-Put the pan back over the heat, dump the meat back into it and simmer for one minute.
17-Add the sauce, cook for one minute while stirring, then add all the green onions.
18-Cook for one more minute, then remove the beef and onions with tongs or a slotted spoon to a serving plate.
19-Leave the excess sauce behind in the pan.
10 June 2008 at 2:20 pm |
Typically not a fan of this kinda music…BUT… I have to say…So right you are my friend… NOTHING short of a masterpiece!! “Angels” from their first release is a GREAT track…”Inner City Plessure” is another great track off THIS record… But “A Kiss Is Not a Contract” always reminds me of Tenacious D!!!!!
10 June 2008 at 4:02 pm |
The P is now dead to me.
10 June 2008 at 4:58 pm |
Special thanks to the readers here – Tenacious D and Hall & Oates were two novelty bands that totally slipped my mind while I was writing this up.
Mmmmm… Mongolian Beef… in Beef Sauce…
15 July 2008 at 8:20 am |
I don’t dislike this CD and I’ve heard the series is very funny, but seriously folks, Ween has been doing this sort of thing way more interestingly for the past 15 years.