In the history of musical satire, there is nothing quite like Flight of the Conchords, the duo of sweetly mild-mannered New Zealanders who spoof everything from David Bowie to gangster rap with understatement and a romantic brand of absurdity that is as hummable as it is hilarious.
In the aughts, Jemaine Clement, now 52, and Bret McKenzie, 49, who started in the alt comedy scene before starring on a hit HBO series named for their group, were hipper than Weird Al and much softer spoken than Spinal Tap or Lonely Island.
Despite making only two seasons before moving on to careers in Hollywood, Flight of the Conchords has remained popular and influential (Bo Burnham said he copied them early in his career), in part because their videos do well on social media. Clement, who can currently be seen in “Alice and Steve” on Hulu, has appeared in many movies, and created the cult series “What We Do in the Shadows,” based on the film he directed with Taika Waititi. McKenzie won an Oscar for writing a song for the Muppets. But they say that their agent regularly asks about returning to Flight of the Conchords. After their last reunion, which resulted in an HBO special, eight years ago, they repeatedly said no — until this year.
After starting to play together casually, they returned to perform at what ended up being a sold-out show at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles last month. Before that appearance, both men, dressed in T-shirts and looking like fit dads at the playground, met me at the club Largo. They sounded interested in doing a long-rumored Flight of the Conchords movie if they had the time and the right idea. But they spoke about it with a certain Gen-X indifference that suggested it could also very well never happen.
Here are edited excerpts from our conversation:
You have been performing as Flight of the Conchords for the first time in almost a decade. What has changed?
BRET McKENZIE I was joking that the songs are old, but we’ve forgotten them, so they’re new to us.
JEMAINE CLEMENT This is the first time we’ve never done any new songs in our set. The one difference is people don’t laugh in the same way, because they know the joke.
Has your relationship to the songs changed?
McKENZIE Some of it feels a little bit creepy. There’s a song “Ladies of the World,” which I really love, but it is very different seeing young men singing that than a couple of middle-aged men.
CLEMENT There used to be a lyric “Sweet 16 is not M16.” Definitely don’t say that anymore. Changed that line.
What inspired you to return?
CLEMENT Eight years ago, I remember saying: “I never want to do this again because of the way management did it.”
McKENZIE It was stressful because we filmed it, so you get a lot of pressure.
CLEMENT We wanted to develop in a small place but they’re putting us in giant venues. It’s hard to develop material in front of 18,000 people. It feels wrong.
What changed?
CLEMENT I started to miss it.
McKENZIE I’d have people come up to me after solo shows and they’d be like, “We love the show. It means a lot.” It got them through difficult times. People have strong emotional connections with the TV show, and I realized people would love to see us. I had sort of lost sight of that.
I rewatched the second season, which aired in 2009, and one thing that struck me this time is the theme of illegal immigration. We learn you are undocumented at the start, and by the end, you two are deported. This seems more political now.
CLEMENT It wasn’t particularly intentional.
McKENZIE I think it was just a solution to end the show. It was just funny.
CLEMENT Now it’s maybe less funny.
With a lot of double acts, many of the jokes come from conflict. But there’s a real warmth and kindness in your relationship.
CLEMENT A lot of comedians in New Zealand when we started were aggressive, shouting and edgy. To stand out, we became quiet and warm. One of my favorite things to do was when someone heckled us, we talk about why that hurt our feelings.
McKENZIE A lot of comedy comes from conflict and putting each other down. So, when we got up and said things like, “Oh well done, Jemaine,” or “Good job, Bret,” people would just laugh because it was so unfamiliar.
Your first special (and major exposure in this country) was in 2005, the same year another musical comedy group, Lonely Island, put out “Lazy Sunday,” which became one of the first viral videos.
McKENZIE Their production values were high and we were just like, How come our videos don’t look as good?
On a recent podcast, the guys from Lonely Island talked about meeting you in the summer of 2008.
McKENZIE They rented a house in the [San Fernando] Valley with a giant pool and a tennis court to make their album.
They told a story where Jemaine told them, “You really go straight at the joke. For us, we kind of walk around it for a while.”
CLEMENT Yeah, but that’s not a criticism. We come from different places. They came from TV and we came from playing bars.
McKENZIE The difference is the chorus. If you can change the visual, like you can on TV, you can repeat the chorus. But in a comedy club, you need to change it [the lyrics in the chorus]. In lots of our songs, there’s almost nothing that repeats. Or if it does repeat, it has a little ad-lib. Because the audience, once they’ve heard the joke, they get bored instantly.
CLEMENT What’s great about [Lonely Island] is their choruses, you want to sing them. We sort of never even thought of that.
McKENZIE But you couldn’t do it live. I bet they’d have trouble. They wouldn’t play as well in a comedy club.
You both did musical satire at this moment when YouTube was starting and now your work and Lonely Island’s are both very popular there, where it gets rediscovered by new generations.
CLEMENT It felt like parallel evolution where a very similar thing came from a different place at the same time.
McKENZIE We kind of looked up to them.
CLEMENT They would buy tracks from producers and we’d make our tracks, trying to record all the instruments. That was killing us. HBO wouldn’t pay for tracks.
McKENZIE The result is the sound is a bit more indie. If they were doing like a hip-hop track, it sounded like a hip-hop track.
CLEMENT With ours, the beats were small and it was a couple of acoustic guitars. That gap between what we’re imagining we sound like and what we really sound like is a lot of where our comedy is.
You said it was killing you. Is that why you quit the show?
McKENZIE The job was finished. We finished the second season, and they asked if we wanted to do it again and we said no.
CLEMENT I think in the American way of doing it, they call that quitting.
McKENZIE Yeah, it was mental. It was just too much work.
CLEMENT I used to think about Dave Chappelle quitting [his Comedy Central show] every day. I’d be like, I could always Chappelle.
Now that you’ve returned and done a few shows, will you keep it up?
McKENZIE Maybe in another eight years. Aimee Mann came to the show the other day and she said we were like cicadas.
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