222: Tim Key. With a String Quartet. On a Boat, by Tim Key

Tim Key (United Kingdom)
Tim Key. With a String Quartet. On a Boat (2010)
30 tracks, 54 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I honestly think Tim Key is one of the very funniest people around at the moment. I first encountered his work as part of the short-lived (three-episode) TV sketch show Cowards, and have been hooked on his work ever since. He seems to approach comedy from a different tack than everyone else. There’s not that many comedians that, for all their acting, writing and TV appearances would still have a legitimate claim for the primary title of poet. But Tim Key’s not exactly normal. So of course one of his most successful solo projects would be a comedy album in the old fashioned way, one made specifically for the listener rather than just a recording of a live show.

The album is ostensibly one of Key performing a collection of his poems to the backing of a string quartet. And it very much is that – there are 29 poems here, all performed in his impeccable manner and of varying length (although most are only a few seconds long, showing a genius and depth of storytelling in their brevity). But it’s so much more than that – in fact, the majority of the album comes after each poem has finished. Key interacts with the listener, instructing them on the premise of the album and how to listen to it, chats with the string quartet and deals with the increasingly frustrated Tom Basden (a.k.a. Lord, and fellow Coward), his usual musical accompanist ousted for the album. Another stroke of genius means that the tracks as presented are not in the order that they ‘happened,’ meaning you can only piece together the drama of it all by listening to it from beginning to end and making a mental jigsaw. In the end, then, Tim Key. With a String Quartet. On a Boat is a deliciously meta sitcom: the situation being the making of the very album you’re listening to.

This album is a great showcase for Key and his double-act with Basden, as it neatly distils Key’s humour and the dynamics of the pair: somehow both dark and silly, light-hearted and ridiculous but occasionally cruel. Above all it’s all absurd, abstract, intelligent and completely deadpan. There’s even an unexpected moment from Basden right near the end of the album in the form of ‘Lord’s Moment’, an incredibly poignant song that comes out of nowhere, but is appreciated all the same.

When I first came to Tim Key’s solo material, I did spend a while pondering, was he was an actual poet, or just pretending to be a poet? Can his works be described as poems? But really, what’s the point in wondering about it? When the end result is that he writes, performs and publishes his takes on poetry professionally, there’s very little difference either way. And when he somehow manages to come out with a record that is at once a collection of performed poems and a spoof of someone performing a collection of poems, you know that that line is always going to be – very deliberately – blurred.