Garfunkel and Oates

Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci sit center stage with a guitar and a ukulele, projecting the earnest energy of camp counselors. They start strumming a bouncy, major-key folk melody. Then they harmonize on a blunt lyric about the logistics of medical marijuana laws, or the exact age at which an unmarried woman realizes nobody is coming to save her. The contrast is the entire engine of the act. Lindhome plays the taller, slightly deadpan half, while Micucci goes wide-eyed and frantic. When they hit a particularly bleak punchline, they don’t break. They just strum louder and smile with unblinking cheer.

They anchored a specific era of internet comedy, back when an acoustic comedy song could dominate YouTube. Though they rarely tour as a full-time duo today, working primarily as actors and writers, you can see their influence in any current musical comedian who uses twee aesthetics to sneak dark material past an audience.

Their strongest material approaches cultural taboos as if they were nursery rhymes. They will sing about pregnant women acting superior or the mechanics of freezing eggs with the same upbeat lilt a person might use to sing about a sunny day. The format occasionally runs out of steam if a song relies entirely on the shock value of dropping profanity over a ukulele. When the underlying writing is tight, the sweet melodies make the harsh reality of the jokes hit twice as hard.

The two met at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. The fact that both are successful Hollywood actors gives them the distance to play awkward, chronically single outsiders without making the audience actually worry about them.