When you're on the street, depending on the street....

After the always-hilarious Flight of the Conchords finished up their first season on HBO, they put out an EP of six songs on Sub Pop Records. The CD includes three studio recordings that were used for the show and three live tracks. It's an interesting look at Jemaine & Bret's original act as the "4th most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo" from New Zealand when they only had their acoustic guitars and an occasional falsetto voice to get laughs.

My favorite song of theirs isn't the popular "Robots", but "The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room":



Something about the line "When you're on the street, depending on the street" gets me every time. The pacing is just right and the jokes build up through the choruses. Some folks compare them to Tenacious D, but they don't have much in similarity beyond the guitars. The D's in-your-grille humor often reeks of trying way too hard, while Flight of the Conchords are more patient and subtle. They hit the punchlines and pause like a standup comic would; it would be interesting to see how they tested this song out live before getting it just right.

For the show, they had to adapt the songs visually to fit the storyline. Here's the same song in their weird NYC universe:



When first introduced to the show, you may think that the music video breaks would get annoying eventually, but somehow they managed to knock it out of the park every time. They vary the styles of their songs enough though that it's never the same thing twice. The second season can't come soon enough for me.

BONUS: Zach Galifianakis has a few new films in the works. IMDB's plot outline for G-Force: "A specially trained squad of guinea pigs is dispatched to stop a diabolical billionaire from taking over the world." It's directed by Hoyt Yeatman and written by Cormac and Marianne Wibberley.