Live Review: Flight of the Conchords, Thursday, May 14 @ the Schnitz-- Local Cut

Live Review: Flight of the Conchords, Thursday, May 14 @ the Schnitz

May 20th, 2009 [1:02PM] Posted by: Matthew Singer | 1 COMMENT

It took until the end of their set at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on May 14 for Flight of the Conchords—that’s Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, the stars of the eponymous HBO cult hit who, together, comprise “the fourth most popular digi-folk novelty act in New Zealand”—to receive a traditional Portland welcome. While the band was in the middle of telling the story behind its epic “Bowie,” a female audience member blurted out, “Take off your clothes!” At first, it confused the pair. Why, after 90 minutes of humorous songs about rapping rhinos, racist dragons, and David Bowie’s nipple antennae, would someone assume the show would culminate in full-frontal nudity? Then they remembered what they had been told about our city’s love of strip clubs, and figured people here just expect anyone on a stage—even one as classy as that of the Schnitz—to eventually wind up naked.

To be fair, though, they had been teasing the crowd a bit: Minutes before, during an acoustic R&B reworking of “Sugalumps”—their ode to that vastly underappreciated part of the male anatomy, in the vein of Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps”—the duo ventured to the lip of the stage and thrust their crotches toward the front row, prompting one woman to lunge at them and the group to sing for security.

All this libidinous hysteria indicates something strange has happened in the career of the Conchords: They’ve become sex symbols. And, because they play guitars, that means these nerdy Kiwi comedians could even be considered rock stars. It’s an ironic development for two guys who, on TV, portray struggling musicians whose only brushes with the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle involve the offer of a boy-girl-boy threesome and ill-fitting leather suits. But it was bound to happen. Artists have straddled the line between pure comedy and legitimate musicality before, of course, but none has ever fully tipped over to being recognized as an actual band. Spinal Tap was too fictitious, Tenacious D too hammy. The Conchords, however, are different. For one thing, they actually write good songs; McKenzie and Clement have a gift for melody that makes their self-titled, Sub Pop-issued debut album worth coming back to even after the jokes have worn off. Beyond that, though, there’s an honesty about them that typically doesn’t exist in musical comedy acts. Even on the show, which aims for absurdity most of the time, there is a sense that the real Bret and Jemaine know the hardships of the fictional Bret and Jemaine intimately—and really, what they’re depicting is the experience of all young creative types: artistic ambition butting up against harsh reality. In places like Portland, where everyone is broke, unemployed and “working on a project,” the Conchords’ appeal is obvious. It doesn’t hurt that they’re fucking hysterical, too.

Considering how popular the band has gotten and the size of the venues they’re headlining—they kicked off this tour at New York’s Radio City Music Hall—it’d be expected for them to move away from the simple, two-guys-on-stools-with-acoustic-guitars setup of their leaner days and do something bigger. But aside from the opening “Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor,” in which Clement and McKenzie thumped drum machines while wearing the cheap homemade robot costumes from the “The Humans Are Dead” video (complete with tiny disco balls dangling in front of their sugalumps), the production values remained modest. They did fill out the arrangements with the help of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra—which, due to budget cuts, they explained, is now just a cellist named Nigel—and enhance the performances with a moody light show (the bluish hue employed for the melancholy “I’m Not Crying” was designed to “make us look like we’re trapped inside a tear,” according to Jemaine), but otherwise, the show maintained the minimalism and intimacy of a comedy club gig, as well as the spontaneity: When some douchebag yelled out for “Freebird,” the duo, as punishment, immediately launched into a nearly full-length, surprisingly straightforward version of the bar band staple—well, straightforward until Jemaine began musing about the co-mingling of birds and humans over the coda.

Not surprisingly, the songs from the first season of the HBO series—“The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room),” “Business Time,” “Mutha’uckas” (featuring McKenzie on drums), the politically conscious “Think About It” (augmented for topicality with a reference to swine flu), and, especially, a slightly remixed version of the battle rap “Hiphopapotamus vs. Rhymenoceros”—received the biggest reactions, but the best moments came between the music. At heart, the Conchords are still comics, and that means their stage banter (or, as they referred to it, “professional talking”) is actually tolerable—even when they’re being preachy. “I say to these impoverished countries,” Jemaine proclaimed before “Think About It,” “I was famished this morning, but I dealt with it.” His solution for world hunger? Eggs Benedict. And then there was the “Bowie” origin story, involving “time tripping” back to the early ’70s, Bret giving David Bowie a copy of the David Bowie Songbook—to make the next 30 years a bit easier for him—and Jemaine consoling two Tina Turners in a bathroom.

There may be too much comedy in the Conchords for them to ever be considered a “real band,” but that’s OK—it’d probably just make them boring, anyway.

Links:
Flight of the ConchordSpace

Photo courtesy of FOTC

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