Cheerful nature Brett Mackenzie shows new sides in his new album

That’s a beautiful aristocratic nickname: Brett MacKenzie is a respected and celebrated “Kiwi comedian” in his native New Zealand. And because his solo album starts with “This World” with such a plot, you’d also expect the lyrics to be funny. It’s kind of like when a pedaling monkey comes to the ring on a unicycle in a circus. Because: MacKenzie can only be funny, right?

Musically it is a digital theatrical, but it is a lyrical ballad of the swan world. Brett McKenzie warns us of plastic-polluted seas, a collapsed climate, and we act as if Mars were a short-term alternative. He is, of course, a friendly fan. According to the motto: We are all in a leaky boat. But anyway, we sit down together. In fact, he’s really serious about the album’s title: Songs Without Jokes. He did the exact opposite for many years as one half of the comedy duo Flight of the conchords. Fun turned into a song. Calling themselves the most popular New Zealand guitar duo-digi-bongo-a-capella-rap-funk-comedy-folk duo, they made a kind of musical comedy series about New Zealand musicians who got their start in New York wanting to create musical daydreams and end She constantly comes up with fake, meaningless French songs like “Fou du Fafa”.

After the Grammys, Oscars and the Muppets: Liberation from the Mainstream

Brett Mackenzie and Jermaine Clement won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album, and in 2011 Mackenzie won an Oscar for Best Feature Song for “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets.

As a result, Brett MacKenzie became a sought-after film composer in Hollywood – but over the years he realized he no longer wanted to be just a composer’s puppet writing story-driven songs. And so he started with the songs of his solo album. Just write a song for yourself again – not for someone else.

Then suddenly everything was in smoke and fire. In “Up In Smoke,” Mackenzie tells how he once again has to fly away from a forest fire. He’s looking at hell from the air, oh my God, he looks beautiful and awful at the same time.

beautiful and awesome

Beautiful and terrible at the same time – this is how Brett Mackenzie also sings about a love that has passed or at least is in crisis, meaning his relationship with the USA, where MacKenzie always lives sometimes. “America, Goodbye” is the name of one of his songs.

Lyrically and musically, Brett McKenzie follows in the footsteps of his idols Harry Nelson and Randy Newman, brilliant connoisseurs of satirical literary songwriting with catchy rhythms. Altogether, Brett Mackenzie delivers on his promise with his diverse and atmospheric debut single album. In fact, they are all songs without obvious jokes. But there is more joy between the lines. cheerful. The absolute joy of playing and the expectation of being able to perform with two musicians in one room and throwing “joy bombs” to the audience. #

Songs Without Jokes – Brett Mackenzie, sub-pop recordings 2020.