Imagine Wally from Where’s Wally has a bookish but mouthy friend. In middle age, the two wallies form an electronic dance duo, wearing Pet Shop Boys’ hand-me-downs of all-white clothing and baseball caps. It’s funny already.

Grown-up Wally is storied New Zealand comedian Tony Martin, and his mate is Damian Cowell, lead singer of anarchic Australian band TISM. Powell played synth, sang and DJ-ed. Martin spun yarns, sang and added hilarious visual humour. What a combo!

At the start, a sample of the toylike Casio VL-1 keyboard riff from Trio’s 1982 hit ‘Da da da’ flagged the unexpectedly nostalgic element of the show. This was confirmed with references in Arseless Chaps’ songs to outdated technology such as the Walkman and Beta VCRs. There was even an amusing song (‘Pong’) about the ludicrously simplistic Atari videogame, Pong.

The derr-namic duo started with a banger. Martin told the story of how a man plunged to his death at a building near a comedy club in Carlton that Martin worked at in the 90s. Someone from the building management asked the comedians at the club not to mention this tragedy, as it was unknown whether the deceased was “pushed off or stabbed off”. Of course, the comedians all promptly inserted this mysterious explanation into their routines. One of the comedians’ cars was burnt a week after. The episode inspired the Arseless Chaps’ song ‘Pushed Off or Stabbed Off’.

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Later in the show, the verbally dexterous Powell related how he and Martin had visited Adelaide’s seaside suburb of Semaphore earlier that day. They were admiring the elegant old sandstone buildings when someone in a car yelled at Powell, ‘Get off the road, you f***ng peanut!” Where many may have been traumatised by this drive-by shouting, Powell took it as a badge of honour and an opportunity to add more Aussie vernacular into his show. He repeated the quote with relish.

Powell did most of the heavy lifting, singing the bulk of the pleasantly cynical lyrics, mixing samples into his songs and doing some dodgy dance moves. But Martin made a highly amusing foil, with his funny looks of earnestness, confusion and glee, as well as his uber-goober dancing. Martin even presented a mini detective story in one of the songs he helmed, only revealed the meaning of the title ‘Barbed wire canoe’ at the end.

The song ‘You asked. We listened’ – originally performed by Damien Cowell’s Disco Machine – is a brilliant attack on the patronising and robotic language companies use with their customers. The song demonstrates that however nonsensical the songs of Arseless Chaps appear to be, they’re not where the real nonsense lies.

A highlight of the show was a hilarious mash-up of Kylie Minogue tracks with the 1998 TISM song ‘Whatareya?’ And the final song of the show included a new acronym that we can all connect to someone we know, ‘FOSGAMI’ (Full of Shit and Getting Away with It’).

With Arseless Chaps’ combination of comic visuals (on a screen behind them), sharp satire, high-brow allusions to Venn diagrams, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, along with low-brow gags, the humour was reminiscent of Monty Python. But Arseless Chaps has an added ingredient – the power and directness of Australasian swearing. Paradoxically, Powell has the ability to deflate pretentiousness while also being a bit pretentious himself. But it’s a potent mix.

All in all, very smart and very funny material, performed with panache and a distinctly Australian irreverence.

 Arseless Chaps performed at the Rhino Room from February 24 – 26