Entertainment Ireland

Flight of the Conchords
I Told You I Was Freaky

The second album by the Kiwi comedians proffers more of the same tongue-in-cheek musical pastiches. If you've seen the second series, you'll know the songs and want them on your iPod. If you haven't, you'll still get a kick out of them - as long as you don't take them too seriously.

If there's one thing that divides opinion, it's comedy. If there's another thing that divides opinion, it's singing comedians. New Zealand duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement - aka Flight of the Conchords - peddle a particular brand of deadpan, self-deprecating humour that's all too easy to be dismissed by those with a chip on their funnybone.

Obviously - considering that this is an album of songs lifted from the second series of their television show - 'I Told You I Was Freaky' will make more sense if you've seen the storyline that they're lifted from. Yet even still, there's a lot of laughs to be had with these twelve short songs. Where Flight of the Conchords excel is at blatant pastiches - they did a superb take-off of Pet Shop Boys on their first album/series - and they continue that trend with rip-offs of corny r'n'b ('We're Both in Love with the Same Girl'), what sounds like an acoustic send-up of Billy Joel's 'Piano Man' ('Rambling Through the Avenues') and the sort of electro-pop hawked by Black Eyed Peas ('Too Many Dicks (On the Dancefloor)').

The bonus is that they're actually accomplished musicians too - particularly Clement, whose deep baritone is full of character. Electroclash rip-off 'Fashion is Danger' is both laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely enjoyable musically, while the swirling, edgy 'Demon Woman' sounds like a swinging '60s beat song.

Whether it's tales of cannibalism woven into a Russian folk song, a rapper's lament on people disregarding his emotional capacity ('Hurt Feelings') or McKenzie and Clement's intuitive back-and-forth lyrical banter, this is an album to put a smile on even the most dejected face. As long as you don't take them too seriously, unfurrow your brow, and realise that this is an album by two comedians practicing light-hearted parody in a superb manner, rather than two musicians, you might just get a kick out of it.

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