Comedic Eclecticism

Flight of the Conchords have “a gift of genre-blending that makes even David Bowie’s efforts pale in comparison,” writes London Time Out. Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie shift comfortably from the soft-hitting hipn hop of ‘Mutha’uckers’ to the admittedly vogueish retro-electro of ‘Inner City Pressure’, in which they movingly address the urban realities of alienation and second-hand underpants. And in the United States, even though many of the jokes were obviously familiar to the audience at two sold-out shows at Washington D.C.’s Lisner Auditorium, the crowd roared anew at songs like ‘Business Time’ and ‘Robots’, a song about “The distant future/The year 2000,” when humans had been eliminated by machines. “That confirms a theory that I’ve had about Washington,” Clement said of the crowd response. “That you’re all robots.” The Conchords’ debut self-titled album is released this week in the UK.