A new tape of love

Over the past two years, the parodists from New Zealand, Flight of the Conchords, have scored with a hit HBO show (in which they play a hapless struggling band whose mundane adventures are punctuated by song) and won a Grammy award with their debut U.S. E.P. (seriously, a Grammy, and seriously, for an E.P., which must have made all those losers who wrote full albums feel like suckers). One half of the group even had a moderately successful indie film, Eagle vs. Shark. While Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement may not be household names, they are getting there.

Another step in that direction is the release today of Flight of the Conchords’ self-titled full-length album. The group had self-released some recordings in New Zealand, recorded a BBC radio series, and even had that award-winning E.P. last year, but this is its first proper studio album and their first major U.S. release.



Of course, it's a soundtrack, a selection of songs performed on the band’s HBO series. And like most soundtracks it's by no means a comprehensive catalogue of the show’s songs: at 15 tracks it would have been hard to include more. Yet it’s missing some of the band’s best tunes, like the flawlessly funny and well-written “Tape of Love.” The song exemplifies the central conundrum of the band. The mix of overwrought earnestness that begins the song is straight out of Mike + the Mechanics’ iconic “The Living Years,” pondering “Love is like a roll of tape/ It’s real good for making two things one/ But just like that roll of tape/ Love sometimes breaks off before you're done” before the triumphal, “Bittersweet Symphony”-like chorus kicks in with “Brown paper, white paper/Stick it together with the tape, the tape of love.”

The thing is that the song, in addition to being hilarious, is also nearly as catchy as those smash hit referents and that makes Flight of the Conchords stand out in the crowded genre of musical comedy: These dudes don’t just spoof songs, they can write songs. Somewhere between Weird Al’s groan-worthy punning and Randy Newman’s wry auteurship, these guys force the ultimate identity crisis: am I singing along to these songs and repeating the lyrics because they’re catchy, great tunes—because it’s music—or am I just another moron endlessly repeating lines from Chappelle’s Show?

It’s a thin line, to be sure.

Adding to this vague sense that Flight of the Conchords may actually be “good” is the company they keep on their label and a resurgence of audio-focused comedy. This isn’t some HBO afterthought of a soundtrack album, but a release in conjunction with Sub Pop records, onetime breakers of Nirvana and Mudhoney and latter-day fablers of indie reconstruction, thanks in part to, yes, comedy albums. Alongside recent label successes like the Shins and the Postal Service have been releases from David Cross, Patton Oswalt, and Eugene Mirman—and falling aesthetically somewhere in the middle of all that you get Flight of the Conchords.



Sub Pop’s Steve Manning said, “The comedy records were really inspirational to us here; they have sold quite well and helped redefine the label at a time when we were really struggling. David Cross came out near the Shins and Postal Service and really helped turn the label around.”

Other labels are following suit, like Matador with its upcoming release of Earles & Jensen’s “Just Farr a Laugh.” So given the push toward reviving the comedy album market (not a little influenced by Internet sensations like Tom Scharpling’s “The Best Show” on WFMU), it makes sense to capitalize on bands blending humour with an indie-rock sensibility and the musical ability to send up more genres than just indie rock. For other examples, look at the phenomenal success of SNL short “Lazy Sunday,” helped plenty by the song’s beat being pretty well done, or the music-comedy work of hipster comics Zach Galifialakis, Demetri Martin and others. Even Will Oldham and Cat Power have experimented with comedy (with varying degrees of success).

To sweeten the deal, these comedy releases are getting the star packaging treatment, from detailed booklets to, in the Conchords case, a poster-sized illustration of the band, and some frogs, and maybe a space shuttle. It’s a move to appeal to the age-old function of the comedy album: lifestyle accessory.

What distinguishes the band further from the history of cheesy spoof songs is its attention to genre. McKenzie and Clement are pop chameleons. They employ falsetto, they get dolled up in ridiculous accents (and acknowledge that their natural accents are pretty ridiculous too), and they even don robot voices on “Robots,” singing “The humans are dead/We used poisonous gasses/And we poisoned their asses.” They ape French lounge (“Foux du Fafa”), dancehall (“Boom”), hip-hop (“Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous”), and offer plenty of their seemingly signature blend of soft rock and smooth jams (“A Kiss is Not a Contract,” “Prince of Parties,” “The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room),” “Business Time”). There’s an homage to David Bowie, called “Bowie,” that traverses from Major Tom to Let’s Dance, with queries like “Hey Bowie, do you have one really funky sequinned space suit? / Or do you have several ch-changes? / Do you smoke grass out in space, Bowie?/ Or do they smoke Astroturf?/ Ooh!” Then there’s also the amazing interpretation of the Pet Shop Boys—its utter nerdiness betraying a love of source material absent in, say, “Like a Surgeon”—using the gothic synthy dance-pop of “West End Girls” to inspire “Inner City Pressure,” “Neon signs, hidden messages/ Questions, answers, fetishes/ You know you're not in high finance/ Considering second hand underpants/ Check your mind, how'd it get so bad?/ What happened to those other underpants you had?"

And such adoration of the various incarnations and personalities of pop is what led inexorably to a proper studio album. One wonders if, having worked with a real producer, Mickey Petralia, (Beck, Ladytron) and packaged their music just like any other album, the boys will want to keep going back to the small screen.

HBO will be sticking with the Conchords’ program, now working on its second season. It’s interesting to note that HBO was also the channel of Tenacious D, a musical comedy duo featuring Jack Black that fared far worse. Yet Conchords probably have more in common with Ricky Gervais’ Extras (and not just for having songs in the show centred around David Bowie), which speaks to the intellectual depth of the humour and the project. “Maybe it’s okay to hum these tunes after all!”

Taking it to the limits

Their sound is synonymous with The Sopranos, and yet the Alabama 3's hard living would make Tony himself blush. They tell No 1 fan Irvine Welsh that they're amazed to still be alive...

More than 10 years ago, a friend from Brixton came to stay in my Amsterdam apartment and brought me a tape of the sessions that would become the bulk of the Alabama 3's incendiary debut album, Exile on Coldharbour Lane. Its fusion of techno with country and western was astonishingly bold, combining the most radical and reactionary genres of popular music. I started to check out the band's gigs and found that Jake Black (aka D Wayne Love), one of the band's founding members, and I had many mutual friends from our raving days in Glasgow, stretching back to the punk era. So I became one of the band's aficionados, known collectively as the "bammies": we're the punters who help make A3 gigs the best party in town.

I can't understand why the Alabama 3 aren't one of the biggest bands on the planet. "Woke Up This Morning", which plays over the opening credits of The Sopranos, remains their best-known song, but you would expect at least one of their albums to have gone platinum on the leg-up from that alone. Over the course of seven albums - from Exile, through Power in the Blood (2002) and last year's MOR, to their latest retrospective, Hits and Exit Wounds - the A3 have turned a crazed mirror on the UK's mainstream cultural influences, parodying derivative and genre-based music through the lens of what the band call their "sweet muthafuckin' acid house country music", with a leavening of dirty rock'n'roll.



I'm wondering how they'd cope if it all suddenly went mega. I settle down with D Wayne and Rob Spragg (aka Larry Love), the other founding member, in a dark corner of Dublin's Clarence Hotel, the smart, corporate, U2-owned enterprise, in front of a tray of our favourite blended margaritas. Does it concern them that lesser lights are fawned over, while they remain on the margins, albeit the exciting, interesting ones? "As long as we do good work," Larry says, "we know there will be a payback time."

Larry is as cadaverous as ever, a man who still looks as if a ray of sunlight will combust him. D Wayne, though, is a more substantial figure than the skeletal, spectral one I've seen grace stages, couches and floors over the years. But these boys are proper rock'n'roll stars. If they wear shades indoors, it's because they're covering up strung-out eyes and brawlers' bruises. Glancing at the tape recorder I've slipped on to the table, Larry asks me: "Do you feel guilty that you haven't had a rock'n'roll death yet, and are still bounding down the highways and byways of self-destruction?" Death is such a cheerful presence in the A3 canon, it's easy to think of the Grim Reaper as a band member. "We've got a lottery in the band about who's going to die first," Larry says. "We're amazed we're all still alive."

D Wayne comes from the Possil area of Glasgow and I'm from Muirhouse, in Edinburgh, so when we get together we talk about art and politics, with all the pomposity, pretentiousness and guilt of true Scottish schemies. Playing back the tape of us rapping is like listening to two 80s Marxist polytechnic sociology lecturers vying to seduce an impressionable fresher. He tells me, touchingly, about my debut novel's influence on the band. "Trainspotting was iconoclastic for us. It introduced a whole disenfranchised generation to literature - a generation that had been informed literature was the possession of an elite. It delineated the complex inner lives of the housing estates and communities people lived in. We've been trying to do the same with our music, trying to show young people that they can make music based on their own lives, using genres like country and blues that they probably considered the territory of their dads and grannies."

But writing novels is a lonely business, and release is often difficult. That's what I envy about these boys: they can hit that stage and perform together; the communication and catharsis is instant, and there's an immediate connection with their audience. "That's the end of the process - the performance," Larry says. "But we're constantly looking for new experiences, new people to bounce off, new shades of reality to reflect our twisted US accent-based view of life. We're always collecting experiences to use as songwriters. But you can write everywhere," he suddenly accuses me. "You used to sit on the Circle line in London with your laptop and knock them out."

I ask them what music kicked off their warped but exhilarating vision of the world. "House affected us deeply," says D Wayne. "But punk rock liberated people like me and those I knocked around with in Glasgow. For the first time, we were able to come out of the scheme, dress up and hit the city centre, talk about Rimbaud and Baudelaire, mix with Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill [of Simple Minds] and get shagged. It opened up a brand new lifestyle for us."

In practical terms, the band grew organically out of its members' acid house DJing activities. Larry explains: "We were doing a gig in Italy, me and D Wayne in the early days, with two turntables and a load of acid house records and some obscure blues LPs. It was run by the Italian Communist Party. There were lots of punk bands. We played our house, the room was full, it was kickin'. Then this guy from the CP came in and said we had to prepare and read out our manifesto. Someone tore a page from an Italian comic book and we read it out. It started, 'The techno warriors will save the Martians.' It made me think about the veracity of political manifestos. The crowd loved it. I often wonder if there are still a few addled Italian CP members trying to live by the code we outlined that night."

Things seem a lot blander now, in the age of Simon Cowell. "Alabama 3 live in this world," Larry says. "We reflect and comment on it. But we're trying to cut through the distortions of people who peddle popular culture as a series of Pop Idol-type creations." So are they speaking to the old punks and house heads, those of us who should know better but just can't quite stay indoors and behave? "Yes," Larry says, "But not exclusively. The last album was called MOR. Some say it stands for Middle of the Road, but it's based on those gorgeous California west coast sounds like the Eagles, and it maybe widened our audience. With the new collection, we just thought we'd offer up a reminder of how we got there."

One of the Eagles' most famous tracks is "Take It to the Limits". Rest assured, the A3 will continue to do just that. It would be nice if the mainstream caught on and this retrospective brought them their just rewards. Yet for selfish reasons, I enjoy being part of a cult who can access the best party around.

Hallelujah goes from 'Idol' to hit

If you watch television, the song has by now become unmistakable: A spare piano chord, a breathy voice and opening lines flecked with biblical references before an uplifting chorus kicks in. This is Hallelujah, a 23-year-old song that has become the most trafficked tune of the soundtrack era, setting the mood for dozens of TV shows and films. Last week, the no-longer cult classic achieved loftier status. Its most popular cover version, released by the late Jeff Buckley in 1994, zoomed to No. 1 on the iTunes download chart, thanks to that ultimate signifier of 21st Century ubiquity, a performance by an American Idol competitor. At the same time, Leonard Cohen, the song's enigmatic 73-year-old composer, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, serenaded with a version of the song by popular Irish balladeer Damien Rice.

"This is a watershed moment," said Michael Barthel, a Syracuse University graduate student who last year presented an academic paper on the song's staying power. "Every generation discovers 'Hallelujah,' and right now, a whole new generation of people is discovering it." So how does a rock-era song become a standard at a moment when radio play is hopelessly fragmented and pop songs are more beat-driven than lyrical? More often than not, muses the Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers, it's delivered in the background of a wordless montage featuring life, death, or heartache.



Among the TV shows that have given Hallelujah prominent play are House, The West Wing, Cold Case, The L Word, Nip/Tuck, Lost and Ugly Betty. With its sombre tone, Hallelujah has been used to dramatize real-life tragedy, including episodes of Without a Trace and Third Watch centred on Sept. 11. "It's so emotional and has a slow build and definitely can pack a punch," said Alyson Vidoli, music coordinator for GO Music Services, which finds music for House, Dexter and several other shows. "Somehow, it always seems to fit for the moment, and when you hear it, you say, 'We need more songs that are inspirational,'" added Tom Calderone, executive vice president of VH1.



Singer Brandi Carlile calls Hallelujah the best song ever written. "We have jazz standards and folk standards that have been passed down to generations," said Carlile. "We don't have that in rock 'n' roll right now. So it's kind of exciting to think of a song like Hallelujah being sung 200 years." It's an unlikely path for a song that was barely noticed upon its release. Cohen wrote Hallelujah, and recorded it in the early '80s for his Various Positions album. In the past, he has described it as "a song about the broken."

The album did not make a dent in the record charts. The song's long path to iTunes began in the early '90s when another cult hero, former Velvet Underground member John Cale, decided to re-record Hallelujah for a tribute album to Cohen. "I called and asked him to send the lyrics," Cale said. "I had one of those old fax machines. I went out to dinner and my floor was covered in paper. There were 15 verses of this song. I went through and just picked out the cheeky verses."



Cale's recording -- sung with a simple piano accompaniment -- would be embraced by Buckley, who was the son of '60s and '70s singer Tim Buckley. Cale's version has been used on the sitcom Scrubs and in Shrek, but it is Jeff Buckley's recording, released on his 1994 album, Grace, that has been featured most often in television shows. And it doesn't come cheap. Vidoli said that the rights to use a big song such as Hallelujah can cost as much as $40,000, which most cable networks can't afford.

Networks, however, haven't shied away from the Buckley rendition. The O.C. used it twice before featuring another version, by singer Imogen Heap, to mark the death of Marissa, a lead character, in the show's third season. In Ugly Betty, the Buckley version plays as a character collapses and dies of a heart attack.



Many, though, hadn't heard the song until last week's American Idol performance. The post-"Idol" surge pleased Mary Guibert, Buckley's mother. But she has grown concerned that the version recorded by her son, who drowned in 1997, may be reaching saturation. Guibert does not have the authority to deny permission for the song's use but is consulted by his record label when requests are made.

"It's not special if it's everywhere," said Guibert.