Flight of the Conchords

I Told You I Was Freaky

(Sub Pop)

Disliking Flight of the Conchords is plausible but pointless. Their music makes no claims of quality. Even the humor is as often careless, mindless and haphazard as it is clever. I heard that the first album was created before the TV series that attempted to work the songs into one-calorie pretzel plots was written, but the second album's music was written concurrently with those plots. The plots only suffered from the increased attention, but the music is as strong as their debut. (Notice I didn’t call the albums their “sophomore effort” and “eponymous” because that would already be way too serious).

The second album has an increased emphasis on penis jokes and techno rhythms, and while the increased production quality eliminates the $2 charm of hip hop picked out on acoustic guitar present on the first record, the added expense does enhance the humor, as these professional-sounding backgrounds are more thoroughly undermined by the cocktail napkin quality of the lyrics. Maybe it's even funnier when purchased on thick vinyl with abundant artwork, poster and booklet (including pages of lyrics and the handful of chords necessary to reproduce these compositions in your very own garage!). Fun fun fun. For the first five or so listens anyway.