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Album of the Week: Bret McKenzie blows the clouds away with stunning debut
Bret McKenzie - 'Songs Without Jokes'
4.5
Jokes are grossly underrated. We still venerate solemnity like priests who have never farted or fallen over, and review sections are all too often dominated by supposed five-star outings with about as much crack as a day-old popadom. Granted some of these sober affairs are masterpieces, but folks like Bret McKenzie can brace the potholes on memory lane and divots on our future fairways with such comforting exuberance that you’re almost gladdened that we’re all cast in a comic tragedy.
The Flight of the Conchords star’s first solo album, Songs Without Jokes, might skirt around punchlines, but it’s still brimming with the sort of wry smile that skims notes across the song sheet like a bee buzzing along to its next pollen perch. It’s not the hilarious majesty of Steve Martin, it’s more akin to the realm of Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman or Dory Previn, but there’s still the sense of comic mirth in the rather more serious welter that fills you with enough pep to transfigure the mould in the corner of your room into a mottled artwork with its own unique perfume.
This exclamation that bliss doesn’t have to be ignorant and dower hardships don’t have to be addressed dolefully is asserted within the first few seconds of the record. The opening track, ‘This World’, almost immediately tackles our existential environmental crisis. Things don’t get much less ha-ha than that. However, McKenzie somehow doesn’t induce even a tad of dread as the pomp of promising horns, and the rapture of a rolling melody whisks up a buoyant message – like a figurative farmer spraying sonic manure onto a proverbial field of hope – that a shit situation is fertile terrain for positive change.
Throughout the album, McKenzie’s songwriting and arrangements collide in this way. He never once shirks the challenges that blight life and society, but with the help of Chris Caswell and producer Mickey Petralia, he embalms these with a sonic spoonful of sugar. The songs are neither rose-tinted nor dancing on graves, they are merely hugs amid the human comedy, like musical versions of a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
Musically, the album adheres to the mix of showtune jazz stylings and the cruising 1980s soundscapes that the first two singles offered up with ‘A Little Tune’ and ‘Dave’s Place’. Most of the anthemic ditties served up meet somewhere in the middle of these rather disparate territories, but the handshake they share is as solid as the one Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers clasp in Predator.
It’s a unique realm with simple chord progressions providing pitch-perfect melodies, polished and colour soundscapes offering up a sense of sanguine nostalgia and the revelry of reminiscence, with flourishes of fluttering strings, and the odd jazzy diatonic landing like a lemon and keeping things fresh and original. This mix of tried and tested compositional contours coalescing with splashes of Barnum & Bailey-like backing music is enough to joyously ensure the nostalgic sentiment is not a pastiche of the ‘80s and something entirely individual.
The freshness of Songs Without Jokes is a sorbet to soothe us through modern times. And perhaps the best part of its zesty triumph is that it soars on the bliss of music’s bubbly beat and marches to the drum of exultant performance. Unlike a lot of modern records, there is nothing bedroom-bound about this production, and you can feel the felicity of its live fanfare in a way that can rig up lighting rigs on its own. With this in mind, Songs Without Jokes is a titillating tour de force that we can’t wait to catch on the road. A glorious feat that seamlessly translates the charisma of its creator, and lord knows that’s not as easy as it might sound.
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