Album review: Bret McKenzie takes flight with a serious side beyond the Conchords
Bret McKenzie has released his debut solo album, Songs Without Jokes.
- ★★★★☆
Whether it’s Harry Styles channelling Harry Nilsson on his recent solo record, Limerick winning All-Irelands or the threat of winter power cuts, it’s hard not to feel that we’re reliving the best and worst of the Seventies. The decade that time temporarily forgot is likewise to the fore on the new solo album by Bret McKenzie, the New Zealand songwriter best known as one half of Wellington comedy duo Flight of the Conchords.
Songs Without Jokes is a departure for the falsetto-touting Kiwi in that – as per the title – it is his first “straight” LP. There are no gags, send-ups or pastiches of artists such as David Bowie or Barry White. As a “serious songwriter”, McKenzie’s message to the world is that it’s business time.
McKenzie's influences are easy to spot. He’s harking back to Laurel Canyon and to artists such Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and – in another reminder that Harry Styles is bang on trend – Harry Nilsson. As is part of the deal with this genre of sun-dappled acoustic pop, the effect is initially slight with a vengeance and it doesn’t help that McKenzie’s talent for schlocky lyrics doesn’t always serve him well (“Drive drive down Sunset/the tears roll down my face,” he sings on the cloying That’s LA).
Songs Without Jokes also gets off to the worst possible start with the excruciating This World. It’s a horn-driven bacchanalia of wine bar pop that features lyrics Save the Whale type lyrics that Greta Thunberg would reject as too on the nose (“we’re all to blame for the state that we’re in/ a billion pieces of plastic floatin’… in the ocean).
But once he drops the New Seekers routine, McKenzie reminds us that, along with the comedy, he’s a writer of genuine flair. The spirit of early Elton John is conjured on the joyous If You Wanna Go. And he delivers a fantastic War On Drugs style heartland power-ballad with Here For You.
A “serious” solo album from one of the Flight of the Conchords guys could have been a bad joke. But despite some initial flubs, McKenzie shows that playing it straight can be as much fun as cracking-wise. The punchline here is that McKenzie effortlessly makes the cut as a sincere troubadour.
