Flight of the Conchords - I Told You I Was Freaky

Rating:

* * * *

Their first long-player suffered a freshness problem. Many of the songs had predated their first HBO series and while many got a second wind all spruced-up in the studio, it still didn't offer many surprises - other than how high it went in the American charts and how many Tuis the NZ music industry gave them for doing that.

The second album, is of course, the soundtrack to the second series (save for a few exclusions like the

Femident Toothpaste

jingle).

And while the sophomore season struggled to repeat the initial spark with some groundhog-day episodes, its spin-off album still feels less of a reprise than the first. It also has a good smattering of tracks that happily defy the usual one-listen rule about comedy songs (the best of those is the bittersweet

Carol Brown

, on which Jemaine is haunted by a chorus of ghosts of girlfriends past).

Plenty of the other numbers will inspire endless enjoyable pop dissection discussion - which five 80s synth-pop hits constitute

Fashion is Danger?

Rambling

Through The Avenues of Time

is Billy Joel's

Piano Man

combined with what? Which Police song had a sex change to become

You Don't Have to Be a Prostitute

? And so on.

While the funkier likes of the Rick James-inspired title track and

Too Many Dicks (on the Dancefloor)

just might come in handy as ice-breakers at your forthcoming office Christmas bash. Because as we well know by now, FoTC do like to rock the party.

Russell Baillie