This album RULES!!!!

(Disclaimer: Those looking for a brief description of the album will find what their looking for in the "Album Overview" section. The section titled "Detailed Track Discussion" is meant only for those who want to read detailed descriptions of the songs, and they do not constitute the essence of this review. Lastly and most importantly, this review is not necessarily written by the point of view of a Ween fan.)

Introduction:

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you don't know how much joy I get from listening to Ween albums. And, no, it's not only the humour and eccentric instrumentation that gives me the joy. It's the FANTASTIC songmanship and melodies. This is why Ween should be remembered forever.

Track Listing:

Best song: "Buenas Tardes Amigo" ... but there are many good candidates

Take Me Away A
Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down) B+
Freedom of '76 A
I Can't Put My Finger on It A+
A Tear for Eddie A
Roses are Free A
Baby B*tch A
Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony? A+
Drifter in the Dark B+
Voodoo Lady A
Joppa Road B
Candi A-
Buenas Tardes Amigo A+
The HIV Song B+
What Deaner Was Talking About A+
Don't Sh*t Where You Eat A-

Overall Score: 5/5 ... easy

Review Body:

Ween consists of two members whose names are Dean Ween and Gene Ween. That's not their real names, but let's humour them. They also worship a god called the Boogdish, which you can see drawn on the waist of the nearly topless woman depicted on the album cover. (Speaking of album covers, I must say I wholly approve of this one!)

You seriously don't run across great songwriters such as these guys. Yes, many of their songs aren't great works of art, because most of the songs are so repetitive, but how many pop bands can come out with 53 minutes worth of catchy melodies? This album goes that long and there's not a moment when it loses my attention. This is something that I, unfortunately, rarely run across.

The diversity in this album (which is also present in most of their other albums) is a beauty to behold. They cover everything from '70s funk ballads, to Medieval folk ballads, to Spaghetti Western music, to rockability, to Caribbean songs, to grunge, to weird eclectic pop music ... and the list continues. Since I already mentioned that all 13 tracks are good, there's absolutely no way you can question Ween's talent.

My favourite song of the bunch is clearly the one called "Buenas Tardes Amigos" because it is so funny! Read about it in the track reviews. But the simple fact is, there are probably 10 candidates for best song of this album. Don't make any mistake about it, this is just one solid, impressive pop album.

There is a drawback, of course, You might have gathered that the lyrics are offensive. Some of them are way over the top offensive! ... But the only people who would get offended by these lyrics (especially since they're quite obviously jokers) are stupid. Parents will want to keep this away from the kids, naturally, but if you're at all interested in listening to great pop music, give this a spin. I promise, you won't go to hell because of it.

How can anybody not love this band? No matter what they do, it seems they do everything right. Furthermore, they write better songs in every genre they imitate usually much better than the vast majority of the people they're imitating! This isn't so much a joke; it's music as it's supposed to be!!!!

Track Reviews:

Ween begins things on a rocking note with "Take Me Away," in which they seem to be emulating the performance of an Elvis Presley impersonator. (You'll notice that there's some underenthusiastic clapping and the performer says "thank you" kind of briefly.) The vocal performance is over the top for comic effect. But this isn't the reason "Take Me Away" is a great song. It's because the melody is catchy and the song does, actually, rock like the best of them back in the late '50s and early '60s. But it's also unique enough to be not be called cliche. It's also entirely unpretentious, which does give this a much nicer, and more solid feel than Queen's "A Crazy Little Thing Called Love." Nice!

"Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" is creepy and disturbing, which is exactly what the band was going for. It features a sickly voice of a kid asking his mom to save him from death and wondering if he's going to go to see God in heaven. The weird thing is that the song is very catchy. Obvioulsy, this band is not for everyone's taste. Just know that Ween are big jokers.

"Freedom of '76" is a ballad that might seem to have been recorded by a funk band back in that day. Though this album was released in the middle of the '70s pop revival, this band covered all sorts of styles with their fresh pair of glasses. (I just reviewed an Earth, Wind & Fire album not too long ago, and this sounds a lot like one of their ballads ... and it manages to actually be somewhat better than that group is 95 percent of the time.) The songwriting is excellent and their approach is fresh. The falsetto vocal performance is convincing even though I do get the feeling that they're doing it tounge-in-cheek.

The word quirky comes to mind when you listen to this catchy, grunge-pop song "I Can't Put My Finger on It," which I would take over 99 percent of every grunge song I heard. The song is verrrry catchy, and that's why I gave the song an A+ in the track listing. The guitars are crunchy, and they even have more intelligence to them than most grunge bands, because they're not loud and ugly just for the sake of being loud and ugly. The song even goes through some bizarre discourses, where we get a quiet, atmospheric sections that feature sea gulls. The end, we get a strong Arabic influence. The surprising thing is that there's nothing awkward about this song whatsoever. Delicious!

For some reason, I think "A Tear for Eddie" is a follow-up to Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven." But all I have to back that up is similarities in the title, similarities in the general mood, and this is an electric guitar led song done in a similar style as Clapton. Actually this is a tribute to Eddie Hazel from Funkadelic. But anyway, this is an instrumental, and it doesn't sound like it's joking. And, what do you know? The guitar theme is great, and I would have actually believed this was an Eric Clapton song. If it was, then it'd be one of his better ones.

Is it too obvious that I enjoy the pop-rock songs the best? Well, they write CATCHY melodies. If only every band could come up with melodies as great as "Roses Are Free," then I would actually enjoy listening to crap like N'Sync. The pop song is a little bit repetitive, but it's a song that could actually stand to be repetive. The instrumentation is silly and quirky, and there's an interlude in the middle that sounds circus-like. Most groups, when they try inserting circus themes in their work, come out CRAP. Not Ween. (And not the Beatles, either.) That's hard to do since I hate circus music.

Now they're doing a Medieval ballad, and it's great!! True the song is called "Baby B*tch" and the lyrics are over-the-top dirty, but I'll happily take this over any Joan Baez folk cover any day of the week. The music is better than most of the stuff Baez digs up, and the lyrics are 100 percent funnier. This song is done in an age-old style, but the melody is so catchy that it sounds like they're not even trying. Maybe they're not! But the truth is, this is gold. Thank the Boogdish!

"Mister Would You Please Help My Pony?" is a pop rock song that sounds like it could have been recorded by a pre-new wave band in the '70s such as the Sparks. Gosh, they continue to write these catchy melodies! Melodies like these deserve A's in the track scores automatically. There's no way around it. The instrumentation is creative, and gives the song something fun to hear. But listen to the instrumental interlude in the middle. It's, more or less standard fare, and they do it so well...

How can I feel relieved to run across a song that I feel has a trite melody? But I never get the feeling that it wasn't done on purpose! "Drifter on the Dark" sounds exactly like one of those cowboy songs, and it has a very similar melody to those. They give it all their weird spirit, though, in their own way. The singing is done cowpoke-style, and there's even a laid back harmonica solo.

Rhythmic studio-altered bongo sounds keep the spirit of "Voodoo Lady" going, which is appropriate considering the song title! Oh, but hear the melody? Again, they come up with a catchy melody. The instrumentation is solid and there's a surprise at the end when a weird sythnesizer wave comes in and messes around, and probably doing "Voodoo" things. Cool!

"Joppa Road" sounds to me like a take off of The Beach Boys' '80s hit "Kokomo," but that comparison is probably out in left field. There's not really a tropical feel to this song, and it's pretty robotic. (But, after all, were the Mike Love-led Beach Boys anything more than performing robots?) This isn't my favorite song of the album, but it still manages to have a nice catchy theme. It's repetitive, but Ween makes that sort of thing work for some reason.

"Candi" is a sound effects composition mostly. It features a few notes of a synthesizer, creating a lethargic "groove" of sorts, and that's answered by a chord from an acoustic guitar. Goofy drums keep the moderate beat going. And then we get waves of sounds, which does nothing more than indicate that these guys were having fun in the studio! (After all, this is their first "big-budget" album.) It not very musical, but it's fun. Its intent was to be goofy, and I enjoy it.

"Buenas Tardes Amigo" is the funniest song ever written!!!! OK, maybe I'm getting too far into this, but this song makes me crack up every time I hear it. The weird thing is, if this was recorded by a cut-rate folk act in the '70s, I would consider this one of the most embarrassingly bad songs ever written. Then how can I enjoy this song so? Let me explain. The is done as a Mexican folk song, and it is fully equipped with acoustic guitar strumming and singing with a Spanish accent. The lyrics are about a man's quest for revenge for the murder of his brother to honor his mother. But the lyrics are so puposefully bad, and they're delievered with utter sincerity!! (Here's a particularly hilarious example of the lyrics: "I looked at every fiesta/ For you, I wanted to greet/ Maybe I'd sell you a chicken/ With poison interlaced with the meat.") Imagine those lines being delivered by someone speaking utterly seriously with a Mexican accent. If that doesn't crack you up, then your sense of humour is broken. Furthermore, this song features a musical interlude that sounds straight out of a Spaghetti Western. This song is too much goodness. This would be something suitable for a William Shatner album. There's not many songs I would say that about.

I'd probably not be too difficult to guess that a Ween song titled "The HIV Song" would sound like music for a Vaudevillian slapstick act. Well, it does. ... They're such jokers. The song is very repetitive, but it's catchy.

"What Deaner Was Talking About" is nothing but an ABSOLUTELY great pop song. It reminds me of those heavenly melodies they would come up with later in one of their ultimate masterpieces, The Mollusk. How can you say no to such a catchy melody? They don't even spend two minutes with this song, either. It's done in the style of a Beatles song. If any other band would have come up with a melody like this, they would have panned it out for at least five minutes. This is a band with endless resources!

"Don't Sh*t Where You Eat" is a nice little concluding pop song. It seems done in a similar style as "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," and the melody is surprisingly not much less catchy. What a testament to their talents!

Concluding Remarks:

The greatest band ever? Maybe not. But there aren't too many bands with these songwriting skills.