It’s not as unlikely as it ought to be: the #3 slot on the Billboard album charts–dominated in recent months by Disney soundtracks and NOW That’s What I Call Music collections–is held by a scraggly, upbeat, politely humorous folk duo from New Zealand. It’s the same duo who was virtually unknown on American soil this time last year, and who, six months ago, was potentially looking at an abrupt end to its cult cable television series. Yet here are recent Grammy winners Flight of the Conchords, the comedy duo of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, celebrating the first of two sold-out nights at NYC’s legendary Town Hall.
The popularity of the Conchords really isn’t all too difficult to map. Playing hapless, itinerant musicians under their real names, the two engage in a celebration of deadpan responses to both comic mismanagement and small, accidental joys; a staged uncertainty in the shadows of the all-too-real uncertainty that current American culture faces with each passing day. Yet they still find it within them to be able to break into songs that channel Prince, Beck, the Pet Shop Boys and Serge Gainsbourg, and which reflect their art, their passion, and their problems. Occasionally these songs allow them to break character from the hapless goofs they portray, and it’s in these moments that they make the deepest connections with their audience. The fact that they’re attractive, successful guys riding a growing tide of mass acceptance doesn’t hurt, either. They’re becoming the most successful musical comedy act since the Smothers Brothers, operating at a level of success they’ve earned, seemingly, by validating our concerns through outsized reappraisals.
Television (and to a more likely extent, the Internet) is how U.S. audiences first caught wind of Flight of the Conchords. Most of the songs from their HBO series have been released, sans backstory, on a self-titled album released recently on Sub Pop, an unexpected success that represents the highest chart appearance of a comedy album since Steve Martin’s A Wild and Crazy Guy hit #2 upon its release thirty years ago. Stripped of the series’ backstory, it’s merely a collection of mild, pleasant, quirky folk-pop, but one which has struck a chord with a growing audience, as evidenced by the 1400 people who turned out for the show, who were so eager to see the two onstage they would have offered up a standing ovation had McKenzie dropped his guitar pick.
Favoring an ascetic stage set of two chairs, a couple of acoustic guitars, small synthesizers, and a few mics, the duo skillfully worked their way through almost 90 minutes of material, padding out a near-complete performance of their repertoire with prepared anecdotes, banter with the boisterous, fratty crowd, and a handful of new songs. The mannered veneer of early between-song jokes soon wore off as shouts of “I LOVE YOU BRET!” and “I LOVE YOU JERMAINE!” rang out at every possible moment. These, of course, led to requests, and predictably to “Freebird,” which Clement acknowledged the only way he could: an amateur attempt at playing the Lynyrd Skynyrd chestnut, over and over again throughout the set, just stopping short of humiliating the genius who shouted it out. Displays like those were perhaps the most refreshing aspect of their performance, the gradual unveiling of duo’s real-life personalities rising out of their meek, unassuming counterparts on television, as it bluntly sold the growing divide between their comic virtuosity and prepared material. This behavior struck me as somewhat refreshing–and struck home the point that we might have been seeing a live performance not long for the medium; a prickly temperament that, by set’s end, framed an act that’s beginning to reveal a potential dissatisfaction with its public image.
