Pop & Hiss

The L.A. Times music blog

Category: Garfunkel & Oates

Musical comedy outfit Garfunkel & Oates are side players no more

Garfunkel_oates

There is a point during most Garfunkel & Oates performances in which Kate Micucci will declare she was a late bloomer. The candid look into her personal life usually comes sometime after the folksy comedy duo has led the crowd through a kazoo breakdown, taken a knock at pregnant women and discussed where ducks rank on the bestiality scale, all of it delivered with buoyant ukulele-led pop.  

As for Micucci's confession, it greets one of the newer additions to the Garfunkel & Oates oeuvre, a peppy keyboard rap entitled "I Don't Understand Job." In the song, Micucci and bandmate Riki Lindhome profess their confusion toward an act of intimacy, but rather than find comedy in lewdness, the pair focus on their own nerdy naivete.

The fact-checking process for this article did not include an investigation into Micucci's past romantic dalliances, and thus the 30-year-old ukulelist will be taken at her word. Yet there's evidence that the graduate of Loyola Marymount University isn't exaggerating. In fact, a certain four-letter word that appears regularly in the Garfunkel & Oates catalog is one Micucci promises she did not say until two years ago.

"I got yelled at when I was a little kid for accidentally saying it," Micucci said. "We were playing Duck, Duck Goose, and my babysitter said, 'Say a word that rhymes with duck' ... And then he yelled at me like you wouldn’t believe. I was so scarred from this babysitter, so I didn't say it again until two years ago."

If so, then the last 24 months of exercising repressed demons have been rather productive. With a mix of innocence and vulgarity, the act's monthly appearances at the Upright Citizens Brigade improv theater are guaranteed sell-outs, and a bigger stage awaits Feb. 10 when the pair headline Largo at the Coronet. What's more, a self-released CD is imminent, and a production deal inked earlier this month with HBO will potentially position the duo as the West Coast female response to "Flight of the Conchords," the network's popular Brooklyn-centered musical series that ran for two seasons.

"I think it will be a little edgier, maybe a little more frankly sexual," Lindhome said of a possible series. "We swear a lot, and [the songs] are really sexual and personal. And they always portray us in a bad light."

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