Comic songs that really soar
Flight of the Conchords’ UK tour kicks off tonight. Beg, borrow and steal to get a ticket, says Mark Monahan
The 2003 Edinburgh Fringe was barely a few days old when word started spreading about a curious new comedy act. Apparently, two twentysomething, guitar-toting Kiwis, down at the “Caves” venue, were playing and singing an hour of very silly songs. So far, so unpromising – after all, supposedly humorous ditties have a reputation for being deadly among seasoned Fringe-goers. Except that Bret Mckenzie and Jemaine Clement, aka Flight of the Conchords, were already rumoured to be that year’s funniest act.
In fact, the pair had visited Edinburgh in 2002, but without quite “cracking” it. How different 2003 was. Once word of mouth took hold, the Conchords – who, the night I caught them, announced themselves as “New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk parody duo” – were unstoppable. Their new show sold out, enraptured critics, and cruised onto a particularly competitive Perrier Awards shortlist. Cut to the present, and their imminent UK tour – their first visit to these shores in seven years – is likely to prove the comedy event of 2018.
How did they become just such a phenomenon? After their Edinburgh triumph, it wasn’t long before the wider world began to notice these two former room-mates at Victoria University of Wellington, who have also described themselves as “New Zealand’s biggest band – if you go by number of band members”. In 2004, they returned to Edinburgh, as well as making a series for BBC radio that portrayed them as fictionalised versions of themselves haplessly trying to crack the London music scene. This led to two television series for HBO (in 2007 and 2009) that relocated that premise to New York.
Big-league TV, music- and comedyfestival appearances (plus two super CDS) followed, along with burgeoning movie careers: Mckenzie’s Man or
Muppet, from 2011’s The Muppets, bagged the Oscar for best original song; while, in 2016 alone, Clement lent his voice to Moana, The BFG and
The Lego Batman Movie. These days, their live shows fill arenas, and demand for their new tour was so great that the duo swiftly added an extra 10 dates.
The uninitiated might, however, be wondering: just how entertaining can a “folk parody duo” really be? And what, for that matter, is folk parody anyway? The Conchords don’t tend to parody folk music; rather, they themselves are a folk band (however loosely speaking) who satirise other popular genres of music. The secret of their success lies in their amalgam of rock-solid songwriting and musicianship, a playfully merciless eye and ear for the conventions and pretensions of pop, and stage personas
‘The Conchords’ central trick is to make it sound as though they’re trying to be sexy, cool or profound’
that are at once utterly earnest, borderline clueless, and drier than a faceful of Sahara sand. The Conchords’ central trick is to make it sound as though they’re trying to be sexy, cool or profound but getting it heroically wrong. In other words, whatever they’re sending up, the joke is always largely on them.
Skinny and rather handsome, Mckenzie is probably the straight man (if only by a whisker), while the effortlessly hilarious Clement often looks so gormlessly deadpan you wonder if his brain has shut down altogether. The chemistry and rapport between them is as subtle and downbeat as it is absolute. “There’s a blurred line between the material and us just talking,” Mckenzie once told The New York Times. “The audience thinks everything is a ‘bit’. But often it’s just us figuring something out.”
Whether or not you believe that, the banter is brilliant, the songs sublime. Take the Girl from Ipanema-style Foux du Fafa, which launches with Clement declaring: “Je suis enchanté!” but is soon sent into an unrecoverable tailspin by his limited command of French. “Où est la bibliotèque?” he rasps. “Ah, Gérard Depardieu! Baguette.”
Then, there’s Inner City Pressure, their homage to the Pet Shop Boys’ electro classic West End Girls, in which Mckenzie bathetically bemoans: “No one cares, no one sympathises/you just stay at home and play synthesizers.” Or, how about their verbally dexterous but thumpingly uncool stab at rap (Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros); or Business Time, in which Clement channels Barry White’s baritone, if not quite his sex-appeal. “Tuesday night we go and visit your mother,” he purrs, “but Wednesday night we make sweet, weekly love.”
Not only are the Conchords in a comic-songwriting league of their own, advance word from previews of their tour suggests that they have buckets of new material that measures up to their old favourites, and that fame and fortune have not affected their humour one jot. To misquote the Rhymenoceros – Bret, to his rellies – how to mother flippin’ resist?
Flight of the Conchords’ UK tour starts tonight in Portsmouth. Details: flightoftheconchords.co.nz