It's 1990. Imagine buying Ween's debut GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, their aggressive and trashy post-hardcore record scattered with occasional strange gospel, folk, psychedelic, funk, and pop tunes. Imagine becoming completely enraptured by its quirky goodness; imagine being hooked by its charming immaturity. Imagine looking forward to what else Ween has to offer. It's now 1991. Imagine scouring the shelves at your local Sam Goody (ha!) and coming across Ween's newest album, The Pod! More of the same right? Oh boy!
The Pod is Ween's murky, druggy album. The tone of their second album is such a radical departure from the first that you'll be scratching your head wondering why they didn't just continue with the winning formula they had established on their debut. Of course, no one, possibly not even Gene Ween and Dean Wean themselves, had prescient knowledge of Ween's trajectory at the time. No one yet knew that EVERY album would be such a radical departure. But, again, place yourself in 1991. Ween's second album is out to the public in all its glory, and all you have is the first album to compare it to. So, how does it compare?
In my quest to absorb and appreciate every album by every artist on the planet, and hopefully become an immortal being along the way that can continue this quest indefinitely (oh please God please make it happen), I try not to compare a band's work to their other work as a basis for judgment. Try as I might, though, I consider Ween's first three albums to be a loosely cohesive package deal due to their similar base artistic ambitions and recurring themes, and I'm not as enamored with The Pod as I am with GodWeenSatan: The Oneness. People either love or hate The Pod with not much room for fence-straddlers, but I'm absolutely straddling that fucking fence. Bite me!
The first bone I have to pick with this album is the dreary production. The lore states that the Ween boys recorded this on a four-track cassette recorder in their apartment (nicknamed "The Pod", aha!) while both were stricken with mono and constantly high on, of all substances, Scotchgard! Only the part about the four-track recorder is actually confirmed, but the sick and stoned aspect of the backstory certainly adds to the experience. These 23 tracks are like one big uncomfortable fever trip. An hour and fifteen minutes of gloomy, plodding tunes. Some sllllloooooooowwww and joyless, some fast and upbeat, some even precious and pleasant. Almost all of them completely sludgy, distorted, and disconcerting. The production, while deliberate and appropriate, is tough to take for such an incredible length of time all in one sitting. The sameness can be claustrophobic.
As for the songs themselves, the filler here is way more obvious. I feel like the debut had something to offer on every single one of its 29 tracks, but The Pod has a fair share of total throwaways. Most of it's on the album's back half, with "Don't Sweat It", "Laura", "Boing", "Alone", "Moving Away", and "She Fucks Me" being my picks for immediately tossing in the goddamn garbage without an ounce of regret. All of them are slow and repetitive as shit without enough melody, or even humor, to salvage them. Other filler tunes on the front half are semi-amusing enough, such as the stoned-out "Pollo Asado" where the Ween boys fumble their way through Mexican restaurant take-out order over some pleasantly plinky background music ("Ok, that'll be $16.07...Out of $20?...Ok, $16.07's your change."), or the tone-setting sleepy opener "Strap on That Jammypac" which, I think, is all about that makeshift Scotchgard bong shown on the album cover. Hey, speaking of which, if you're a Leonard Cohen fan then that cover should look familiar! They lifted it from Cohen's The Best of Leonard Cohen greatest hits compilation and slapped picture of a guy wearing a bong-mask right over Cohen's mug! Now that's funny!
That's enough for the negatives, at any rate. For the defense, I'm still a big appreciator of Ween's relatable brand of stupid humor which is all over this record. It's just this dumb, teenage, inside-jokey, sneery asshole-type humor that, while I can't speak for anyone else, I can certainly connect with. I like that they have the balls to just put it out there, too. The over-the-top voices/accents, the constant mentions of "pork roll, egg and cheese", the snickering that they left in everywhere. The nonsense call-backs from the first album, such as Eddie Dingle or the established brotherly love between the two Ween boys. I love the beginning of "Pollo Asado" where Deaner asks over the romantic muzak "Come on, it's a beautiful night for a walk on the beach, wouldn't you say?" and then Gener responds in his best racist faux-Hispanic male stoner Pedro-From-Napoleon-Dynamite voice "YES, I WOULD SAY THAT...I WOULD SAY THAT" before launching right into ordering Mexican food. I love the absurdly off-time percussion stops and starts in "Molly" while the Weens grumble through their "Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly Molly" choruses. I love the completely indulgent '70s hard rock send-ups of "Dr. Rock" and "Sketches of Winkle" played straight amidst all terrible distortion. That shit is hilarious!
Not to mention that there quite a few very good melodies hidden in the sludge. The aforementioned high-energy "Dr. Rock" and "Sketches of Winkle" have some very tasty guitar licks, while songs like "Captain Fantasy" have snarky falsetto passages that can get stuck in your head for days. "Right to the Ways and the Rules of the World" is a slow, fanciful proggy tune that has a beautifully simple...I want to say it's an organ...melody linking together the verses. "Mononucleosis" is the haunting, feverish, possibly autobiographical account of one of the Ween boys (Deaner?) falling ill with mono and the grief that the other one (Gener?) is going through. Once the song is over you're gonna think you just got mono yourself. "The Stallion (Pt. 1)" is completely, unnecessarily in-your-face with an onslaught of aggression and industrial noise, while Gener spits lines in a haughty medieval-type voice stuff like "YOU GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH/YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT" and "I'M THE STALLION, MANG". And don't sleep on the more restrained reprise, "The Stallion (Pt. 2)", at the end of the album. It's just as uproariously stupid! "Deaner! Deaner!/Dude, where can you be?/Come hither!/Who are you?/The stallion!..."
So there you go, the good is really good and the bad is really bad. That's about right. Whether you do love it, or hate it, or are a loathsome fence-straddler like me, the agreed consensus on The Pod is that it's 1) Ween's most inaccessible album, and 2) Ween's most quintessentially "Ween"-like album. In other words, this album mustn't be overlooked and only serious attempts to break through the barrier must be taken. In the end, the opinion you form should be your own. The Boognish himself wouldn't accept anything less from his prospective disciples.
JUST OK
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