Live Review: Flight of the Conchords with Eugene Mirman at Marymoor Park 6/22

Well, Seattle, it looks like we've corrupted Flight of the Conchords. Jemaine Clement, the gap-toothed glasses-wearing half of the New Zealand duo, confessed to the audience: he ate half a banana... and just left the other half sitting backstage! WHOA. "I'm the Iggy Pop of the band," he admitted ruefully. Later, his guitar blipped a little bit of feedback. So rock n' roll. "Well, Jimi Hendrix is from here," he rationalized, adding that all of this rowdy behavior would be documented in the band's biography, a tome sure to make Mötley Crüe's The Dirt look like Goodnight Moon. And, perhaps worst of all, even though there are "reportedly" posters backstage saying bands are only allowed one song per encore ("You don't do more at Marymoor," Bret McKenzie [the bearded one] quipped), the band did TWO songs to a delighted audience. Clearly, it's "boys gone wild," and really, who can be surprised when they're signed to Sub Pop Records, whose roster is laden with debaucherous artists. (I'm looking at you, Helio Sequence.)

Well, half eaten bananas aside (literally), it was an absolute joy to see Flight of the Conchords back together again. After the 2009 release of their LP I Told You I Was Freaky and the subsequent end of their HBO television series, the guys have pursued separate projects. McKenzie continued to work with FotC director James Bobin on The Muppets, which won him an Oscar for Best Original Song. Clement co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in the film What We Do in the Shadows. There was some other stuff, too. But, as the Lennon and McCartney of "guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk," the boys are at their best together.

Stand-up comedian Eugene Mirman kicked off the evening, but sadly, due to poor planning on my part, I only caught half his set. For those who don't live in the area, the Marymoor Park amphitheater is just 15 miles east of downtown, an open-air oasis away from the city, surrounded by tall beautiful trees. If, like myself, you haven't been there in a while, here's my advice: leave earlier than you think you need to. Since the park follows city ordinance curfew, shows start and end early. (Second piece of Marymoor advice: bring cash; you have to pay for parking.)

Not only is Mirman a fellow Sub Pop artist (his latest, the epic 9-volume/7-LP set I'm Sorry (You're Welcome), was released back in October), but he also had a recurring role as Eugene the landlord in the Flight of the Conchords TV show. He's perhaps best known as the voice of Gene Belcher in the animated FOX TV series Bob's Burgers (which, incidentally, features another FotC TV alumni: Kristen Schaal).

A lot of Mirman's humor relies on visual and audio props, which got a little lost sometimes in the vast 5,000 seat capacity venue. He played a couple of clips off his phone, holding the speaker up to the microphone, but it would distort the sound, making it hard to understand. (It didn't help that, as an outdoor venue, a seaplane happened to be flying overhead at the time.) And while there were two giant screens on the sides of the stage, even when the video camera would zoom in on his signs, they were still hard to read sometimes. He closed out his set with a pilot he shot for Comedy Central, called Eugene TV, that projected loud and clear (and hey, there was Kristen Schaal again, in the mock-reality TV show "My 25 Foot Tall Daughter.")

With no need for breakdown/set-up, Jemaine and Bret promptly took the stage. Bret looked dashing in a all-white linen suit with just a black tie (very "Colonel Sanders"), while Jemaine wore a more casual burgundy two-piece. They're only a week or so into the tour, and admitted that they're still trying to memorize the new songs and remember the old ones, so as they started the set, they had to stop-start twice ("We should probably play the same beat." "Good idea."). But once they got into the song -- titled "This is How We Party" -- they were off and running, offering lyrical party tips like "If you put in a CD / take the first one out and put it in its sleeve." If you've ever checked your email from the toilet at a party, you'll relate to this one.

Another new song out of the gate: a sensitive father/son duet, with Bret playing piano. In the video monitors, a smaller Bret was overlapped with the image of Jemaine, like those retro Olan Mills portraits. (As an aside, I don't know if they're touring with a special effects person, or if the night's visuals were done in-house, but someone was clearly having a ball with the filters, lights, and smoke machine.)

The guys welcomed special guest, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, i.e. Nigel. Together, they tackled old favorites like "Robots," "Foux du Fafa," "The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)" (with Bret changing the lyric to "Cause you're so beautiful / Like the Washington area scenery"), and "Carol Brown." They did a pretty excellent medley of "Mutha'uckas" into "Hurt Feelings."

And then more new songs! "Seagull" is a James Taylor-ish '70s-style ballad, with a little bit of a Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin" in there. Another new one is a medieval-style ballad set in 1353, with advice on woo'ing followed by an epic, stage-trashin' recorder performance (i.e. Bret knocked over his mic stand. So metal!).

Some of the new songs were a little mystifying, like a rather long Bonanza-style western saga about doppelgängers sung in an American accent. (When an audience member tried to slip away mid-song, maybe to use the bathroom or get another drink, the guys actually called him out, with Bret yelling, "You've made it this far! You have to hear how it ends!" The guy returned to his seat.) Another weird one was the freestyle jazz track "Shady Rachel," a seemingly-improvised song about a spoon thief.

More classics included "Angels," "Business Time," and the timely tribute "Bowie's in Space." The Marvin Gaye-inspired socially conscious spoof "Think About It" actually took on some weight as Jemaine improvised the lyric, "Maybe not let just anyone buy a gun."

There's no release date yet for a new album, but from what we saw this night, the guys haven't lost their touch. Now, if only we can make sure they don't implode on tour and end up as another rock n' roll casualty.