published: 29 /
1 /
2010
Sarah Johnson finds the comedy rock genre resurrected and finally escaping its novely tag as a result of duo Flight of the Conchords. She looks at the New Zealand act's career and two albums
Article
The high street seems to have got a head start on novelty chocolate hearts and big red bears this year. February’s obsession with velvet flowers and doe-eyed animals is cringeworthy and exactly what the term ‘novelty’ was made for.
Unfortunately it’s one of those words that gets applied to all sorts and has a tendency to cheapen whatever it describes. So when it comes to the ‘novelty’ song the term has managed to push comedy rock to the bottom of the bill. Thankfully New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords is reminding everyone what good comedy rock sounds like.
Comedy songs have fallen in and out of fashion just the same as any other genre of music, but the difference is, even when its appreciated its often seen as having a short shelf life and only being funny in context.
Like any music, that’s only true if it’s not that great to start with. Take Peter Kay’s ‘Show Me the Way to Amarillo’, it’s the video that made it funny. The song was never going to show up on anyone’s desert island discs list.
But even the great stuff of recent years is often cautiously left in context. Comedian Bill Bailey bases a lot of his stand up on music and makes it work fantastically but he hasn’t released his comedy songs as an album. Similarly the Mighty Boosh leave their music as part their TV show. Radio and TV presenters Adam and Joe released their song wars feature from their BBC 6 Music show as a downloadable album but it didn’t change the context of the music.
Listening to Flight of the Conchords self titled debut and their ‘I Told You I was Freaky’ follow up album on the tube or waiting for a bus, makes it clear how accomplished both Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie are as musicians and comedians. The songs work so well alone that you don’t need to have even seen the TV programme. It has an impact somewhere in the middle of listening to a comedy podcast and just enjoying the composition of the tracks.
When you hear lines like "There’s a man lying on the street some punks chopped off his head/I’m the only one who stops to see if he’s dead”, in the styling of Marvin Gaye or 70s political soul, its impossible not to laugh. Especially because the song, ‘Think About It’, is all about kids on the street killing each other with knives and folks.
When Clement and McKenzie formed Flight of the Conchords in 1998 they played festivals and toured comedy clubs. They were playing early versions of songs that later made the basis of their TV series and that’s probably why their brand of comedy rock works as more than just a novelty. They aren’t just a parody of a band, like the Rutles before them. When they do parodies, they are parodying sounds and eras. What’s more they are doing it with a genuine enthusiasm for the music they are influenced by.
When it comes to ‘Robots’ on the debut it’s the delivery of the lyrics that brings the humour. An emotionless robot voice talks about how humans have been wiped out in the distant future of the year 2000. The line "there's only one kind of dance: The Robot…. and the Robo Boogie, Oh and the Ro...two kind of dances," sums it up.
The timing on the album, like all great comedy (and music), sounds effortless. Soft guitar on ‘The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)’ leads into soulful lyrics and funky bass, which doesn’t try too hard. The impressive thing about their music is that when most of it turns up on a random playlist its not always immediately obvious that it is a comedy band. That is until you come to a line such as, ‘And when you're on the street, depending on the street/ I bet you are definitely in the top three.’
They have their ‘silly’ lyrics, with David Bowie’s ‘nipple antenna’ taking the prize. But even when the lyrics take centre stage and scream comedy, the music never falters.
Second album ‘I told you I was Freaky’ kicks off with the track ‘Hurt Feelings’ which is a work of pure genius. Not only are the rap style lyrics hilariously funny but the melody is hauntingly sweet.
It leads into a Black Eyed Peas style R and B track about Jemaine’s ‘Sugalumps’ driving the ladies wild. It’s a track that could easily be mistaken for a tongue in cheek pop song, even the lyrics "I see you girls lookin' at my junk/Then checkin' out my rump/Then back to my sugalumps," wouldn’t be out of place on Radio 1. That just makes it all the more funny.
‘Carol Brown’ is a folky pop song about Jemaine's failed relationships with the chorus song by a choir of his ex-girlfriends. The song is as sweet as toffee and made better only by the subtly of it humour. With lines like "He says he'll do one thing and then he goes and does another thing," as Jemaine replies, "who organised all of my ex-girlfriends into a choir and got them to sing?".
The Flight of the Conchords are not the first band to pull off comedy rock music and do it well. Back in 1960 Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren made comedy single ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ a top 5 UK hit. But what they are doing is reinventing the genre for an audience used to being bombarded with pop culture, and when that is the landscape the music has to be good to get through the din.
Their songs will keep itching at your iPod vying for more play and the tunes will sit firmly at the front of mind without being annoyingly repetitive. Comedy rock is infiltrating the mainstream once again. Even Stewart Lee, a comedian with no track record in music, ended his latest tour with a comedy rendition on the guitar dressed up as a serious cover song.
The difference is the genre has shaken the ‘novelty’ tag. Flight of the Conchords is making comedy rock credible and with the news that there’ll be no series three of the TV programme, fans can at least take refuge listening to the albums safe in the knowledge it wont wear thin or turn them against the show. Plus you can pretend that Murray finally got Jemaine and Bret a big record deal and hope they tour in the UK sometime soon.
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