Flight of the Conchords – Looking for A Good Laugh from Listening to Your CD?

Rarely do I come across a music album that put a smile to my face every time I put it on.  Kudo to these two New Zealanders – the comedy duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement – whom I have made an introduction here after my HBO blogger event.

In the first ten listens, you probably won’t get all the jokes from within this album of 15 songs.  Even so, you shall be love-at-first-sight with the rap song “Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenoceros” like I do.  One part, after Bret has done his part, Jemaine took over and rapped, “They call me the hiphop-potamus, my lyrics are bottomless …”  And he got stuck running out of words to say while the music goes on and on.  That is hilarious.  I really shouldn’t go into the subsequent lyrics of “My rhymes are so potent that in this small segment, I made all the lady listeners pregnant” here.  Note: their stage names are actually Hiphopopotamus and Rhymenoceros.

While many people like the back-to-the-eighties-Pet-Shop-Boys sound-alike song, “Inner City Pressure”, I find the song “Robot” very original, very entertaining.  It is a song about the future … erm year 2000 … when robots took over the world.  It never fails to make me laugh with the binary solo.  Believe me, they actually rap in zeroes and ones.  And when Jemaine bursts out the line, “Come on sucker lick my battery”, that got me laugh-out-loud every time.

Majority of the songs, they have woman as the subject and turn it into something absurdly funny.  Like the song “Ladies of the World”, they sing …

If every soldier in the world
Put down his weapon and picked up a woman
What a peaceful world this world would be

Or the song, “Think About It” …

A kiss is not a contract but it’s very nice
Just because you’ve been exploring my mouth
Doesn’t mean you get to take an expedition to the south

These sort of lyrics got me shaking my head with a smile every time I hear the songs.  Who would have dreamed up lyrics like that?! 

Musically, there are the pop, the rap, the eighties, the funk, and more.  Some songs I still don’t quite get it.  Like David Bowie’s nipple antenna.  Another song that is pretty gross is “Business Time”.  That song lasts 4 minutes while the rather un-sexy love making story within the song only lasts for … 2 minutes.  Very funny, regardless.

The HBO TV adaptation of their music acted by them contains more songs than this album.  Till today, that one line “ALBI the racist dragon” still stuck in our minds – Cynthia and I.  In that particular episode, Bret and Jemaine – two New Zealanders struggle to have gigs in America – faces a lot of racism from the people in the neighborhood.  Towards the end of the show, when the Americans realized that they are not the Australians, the Americans suddenly become very friendly to them.  We thought that is a pretty funny episode to watch.  These New Zealanders always try to poke fun at the Australians whenever they can.

Rarely is there a music album that is funny and yet with class.  “Flight of the Conchords” is one album worth checking out.  You may need to listen to it a few times to get the jokes.  But it’s worth the effort I am telling ya.