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OK fine, so they’re not amazing composers, instrumentalists, or singers. But they do play an impressively wide variety of musical styles. They’re also liable to make you laugh out loud often. If you’re a fan of their show on HBO then you already know what I’m talking about.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement are Flight of the Conchords. They are the self-proclaimed “New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo” but this is a very modest claim. They have a critically acclaimed comedy series on HBO approaching its second season, have released several music albums, and have received various awards for both of these. In addition to their lyrics often being laugh-out-loud funny, they also do a great job of making fun of the stylistic stereotypes of many genres. This album contains at least the following musical styles: pop-rock, hip-hop, R&B, reggae, 80’s pop, and eastern/Indian. There’s also a song probably best described as French samba, and another I’ll call robot electronic (which features a binary solo).

Flight of the Conchords is the type of album that I can listen to if I’m in a less than desirable mood and it never fails in bringing a smile to my face. It’s something that’s certainly handy to have around because you never know when you’ll need it. There aren’t any pseudo-covers like Weird Al Yankovic does; all the songs here are FotC originals. Some of my favorites are sad attempts at serenading women – Ladies of the World, The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room), Business Time – and I also think Hiphoppopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous and Think About It are standouts. As I implied in the intro, don’t be expected to be blown away by the musicality of this album – its primary purpose is comedy. Yet strictly from a musical perspective I still consider these songs to be better than most of the stuff on the radio, not that that’s terribly difficult to accomplish.