Protest if you must, but the second season of "Flight of the Conchords" somehow ended up being better than the first. Fair may it be to argue that Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie's Kiwi hipster-doofus schtick had outworn its welcome (the dubious return of Bret's "Rap Dancin'" crew-neck sweatshirt might be all the proof needed there), the faux-folk duo found themselves backed by better writing, more screen time for all those increasingly brilliant auxiliary characters, and, in some respects, better songs. If for nothing else, it's well worth the price of the DVD for the pleasure of having the timeless image of a baffled Jemaine confronted by an identically dressed Art Garfunkel permanently seared onto your frontal lobe.
But about those songs. Like their self-titled debut, I Told You I Was Freaky collects the musical focal point(s) from each episode, presented untouched and sold as an album. Unlike the debut, which effortlessly presented itself as a straight-up comedy record that succeeded independently of the accompanying television program, Freaky sort of only works as a soundtrack, slave to the mutual exclusivity of its visual counterpoint. So even the fact that most of the songs here are funnier, more varied, and in most cases more tuneful and catchy than their predecessors, most of the payoff is tied to whether or not you're able to reenact in your head the very same imprudent predicament featured on the screen.
For example, there's the falsetto-laden "We're Both in Love With a Sexy Lady", a spot-on send-up of R. Kelly and Usher's "Same Girl". While the idea may seem pitch-perfect, the song has an awful lot to do with the particulars of the episode where both Jemaine and Bret fall hard for a girl with an epileptic dog. If you're already on board, the song's still great fun-- if not, it's simply a plot-tie set to music. Though I seriously doubt there will be more than a couple of people out there picking up this record without having seen "Flight of the Conchords", it's difficult to fully enjoy something that so critically hinges on external specifics. So even in rare cases where songs fall flat, like the Police-baiting "You Don't Have to Be a Prostitute" or "Angels", you don't even have the memory of Jemaine hooking in too-short-shorts to pad them with. It's almost as if those geniuses at HBO are trying to boost DVD sales or something...
On the other hand, there are plenty of tracks here that require no memory-jogging to enjoy, from the crunk-tweaked "Sugalumps" (a clever inversion of "My Humps") to the trashy B-more club bounce of "Too Many Dicks (On the Dancefloor)" (see a theme emerging here?). In fact, quite a few of these cuts come dangerously close to seamlessly adapting to the, ahem, goof-less Hot 100 landscape, where both Trey Songz's excellent ode to sexting, "LOL :-)", and LMFAO's confoundingly idiotic "I'm in Miami Bitch" remain comfortably seated. It's no joke that there's real talent at work here: The joke-y new-wave synth exercise "Fashion is Danger" is too generically silly to leave a mark, but even the filler content-- "I'm the edge, I'm the chic, I'm the taste/ I'm larger than life with just a hint of lace"-- has enough bite to resonate with the shrewdest of Lady Gaga fans. Much like with the show, if the big idea keels over, you can expect a million little baby ideas to come spilling out, each one more charming than the last.
But the separation anxiety that Freaky induces is its unfortunate undoing, though we can least be glad that someone had the good sense not to include dialogue interludes for context's sake. Call it a noble sacrifice for the good of the series, but one that ultimately leaves the album looking a little too much like a party favor long after the credits have rolled. It might be a lot to ask, but hopefully one day our heroes might get around to recording a comedy album proper, show or no show. In that case, we'll be right here. Or as Murray would say, "present."
