Flight of the Conchords
I Told You I Was Freaky
(Sub Pop, 2009)

If you had told me three years ago that a folk comedy duo from New Zealand would become an underground phenomenon, not only would I have believed you, but my faith in a bright future would’ve been reinstated. But you didn’t tell me, so it came as a complete shock when deadpan Kiwi duo Flight of the Conchords snuck quietly into a seedy little one-bedroom on the Lower East Side and took over comedy culture.

As their half-hour long weekly HBO show continues to get funnier (you must check out the episode where FOTC’s bumbling manager Murray gets them addicted to hair gel) and more popular, earning the show an impressive six Emmy nods this year, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie further cement themselves in the pop culture spotlight. And I Told You I Was Freaky, the pair’s second full-length studio album, comes just in time to satiate ravenous fans who’ve already memorized every word to Flight of the Conchords’ 2008 eponymous debut.

Unlike those songs on Flight of the Conchords, the majority of tracks on I Told You I Was Freaky were legally available digitally long before they were physically released—many tracks were individually accessible when they premiered on the TV show. The exceptions are “Rambling Through the Avenues of Time”, “Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor)”, and “You Don’t Have to Be a Prostitute”, which are album exclusives.

One of the beautiful things about comedians gaining cultural cachet is that it generally comes with more creative freedom. And McKenzie and Clement have taken full advantage of their newfound irresistibility, pushing their already outsider comedy style into a new, weird astral plane.

I Told You I Was Freaky opens with the hilarious gangsta rap “Hurt Feelings”, which rhymes the phrase “prize asshole” with “my casserole” and “profiteroles” while name checking Maid in Manhattan in its manic two-and-a-half minutes. “Sugalumps” is a dance floor rager that puts Fergie to shame by not only employing a confounding array of euphemisms for testicles but also somehow working in the word “kerfuffle.” The liner notes that come with the CD contain chord charts and full lyric sheets for each song, so fans can learn all the hits (although the synth-y hilarity of “Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor)” and “Fashion Is Danger” is a little lost on living room acoustic guitar).

The fact is, this new dose of Conchords is so awesome that I struggle to find fault with it. If there’s anything about it that doesn’t completely satisfy, it would be that the majority of I Told You I Was Freaky is electronic-based, a little too far removed from their folk pedigree. But artists need to evolve, and the boys finger their synths just as sexily as they strum their axes, so I’ll take it from these Down Under dudes any way they want to bring it.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]