KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * *
Label: Subpop
Verdict: Those guys off the telly finally make an album.
Well, they won a Grammy for their first recorded effort, all six tracks of it (including three live ones). So it's perhaps no surprise that our favourite folk/comedy duo haven't exactly extended themselves on their first album proper. Yes, the packaging is lovely. And yes, there are more tracks - 14 full-length songs - but if you saw the first series of their HBO show you would have heard all of them before. Though completists might wonder at the omission of I Like to Rock the Party, Albie the Racist Dragon and, of course, Doggy Bounce.
Sure, what's here are the fleshed-out versions and if the hilariously deadpan lyrics and wry rhymes are already familiar, you can always appreciate this for the production getting just the right sonic touches to the various genres they are parodying - the mini-medley that is Bowie would have its namesake thinking his life was flashing before his ears; Inner City Pressure is clearly the best song the Pet Shop Boys never wrote; and there are rolling in their graves jokes to be made about Marvin Gaye and Barry White on songs like Think About It and Business Time.
While the likes of Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros and Mutha'uckas show if the folk parody gig doesn't work out, they could always become our fourth most famous hip-hop comedy duo, no trouble at all.
