Life > May 1, 2008

By Will Burke | Staff writer

New Zealand’s third most popular folk rock duo has finally released their first full album, Flight of the Conchords. The album features Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement singing 14 tracks off of their hugely popular television series on HBO, also called Flight of the Conchords.

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The band goes on a musical journey across themes from love at first sight to the robotic uprising of the late ‘90s to David Bowie (Yeah that’s right, I said late ‘90s).

Flight of the Conchords, like Tenacious D before them, relies heavily on its creative and humorous lyrics to entertain the listener, “You’re so beautiful, like a tree, or a high-class prostitute” being one example off of the track, “The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room).”

The tracks often lampoon various styles and common themes used in music. “Business Time” is probably the funniest and saddest love-making song I’ve ever heard, and “Think About It” raises some very important issues facing society today “Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got little kid slaves making them?”

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie formed the band in 1998 while living together in college.

Since then, they have received international recognition for their act and released an EP titled The Distant Future in 2007.

McKenzie also played an elf extra in two of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies (I’m not even kidding, go Google Figwit).

The two split the musical loads evenly, taking turns singing lead on every track except for “Leggy Blonde,” which features Rhys Darby, their co-star from the television show who plays Murray the band manager.

Because these songs are all featured in the Flight of the Conchords episodes, a lot of the visual humor is lost when the songs are turned into tracks.

One of the tracks is sung entirely in French, and, while it is one of their catchiest songs, the campy performances in the music video make it even better. Puritanical fans of the TV series will also probably complain at some of the changes made on several of the tracks. “Robots” sounds much more polished than the live version on The Distant Future, and the over-stylization actually seems to detract from the song.

One of my favorite songs from the show, “Bowie,” is unnecessarily rushed at the intro to the song as well.

There are also several really good songs (“Frodo” and “Cheer up Murray” being two examples) missing from both The Distant Future and Flight of the Conchords that could disappoint some fans.

Don’t think that these complaints make this a bad purchase.

Any fan of the show will be able to appreciate the quirky and often self-deprecating humor of Flight of the Conchords.

There are 14 tracks plus a track of Clement and McKenzie saying goodbye at the end.

All in all, you get plenty of bang for your buck.

This is a good album because it’s a great mother flippin’ show.