Excuse Me While I Burst Into Flames

Freddie Farrell leans heavily on the quiet, self-inflicted indignities of working-class British life for his debut comedy album. Recording in his home territory at The Mockingbird Cinema and Kitchen in Birmingham, he spends most of his stage time examining his own shortcomings rather than attempting to fix the world. He walks the crowd through the physical realities of turning thirty, comparing his efforts at the gym to being on death row, and detailing the bizarre overlap of a safari park trip and a funeral. The 42-minute album, released in July 2017 by Comedy Dynamics, captured Farrell at a point when he was transitioning from a hard-working regular on the UK comedy club circuit to building an international digital footprint. His style is conversational and punchy, prioritizing short-story narratives over rapid-fire setups with tracks like ‘Online Banking’ and ‘Porn Comments’ dealing with modern digital isolation.