Sad to say, the day has finally come – Ween has made one joke too many. Dean and Gene Ween (Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman, in reality) have built a fine career out of turning pop music upside down, and nothing has ever been off limits, musically or thematically. Face it: Ween does not care for your sensitivity.
And Ween’s admirable, devil-may-care attitude contributes largely to the overall lopsided results of the group’s ninth album, La Cucaracha. When we last heard from Dean and Gene, the duo had released the scatterbrained Quebec, a return to form of sorts (did they ever really have a set form?). The album resurrected much of the beloved Ween insanity within the confines of the duo’s newer, more-polished sound.
Yet La Cucaracha sounds even more strung together. Despite a few bright moments, the album fails to do what Ween has always done best: Make some joyful noise. On The Mollusk and Chocolate and Cheese, the band created listening experiences equally bizarre and pleasurable for the audience and the performers. But the band’s latest album suffers from the kind of self-indulgence Ween has always indulged in bashing.
Parody is a dish best served by those who love that which they parody, but La Cucaracha features a lot less love with a double dose of cynicism. We get it – pop music lives and dies by a ridiculously predictable (often laughable) set of genre expectations. But even in a moment of relative mediocrity, Ween still manages to crank out a few gems.
After tossing off three better-forgotten tunes (the worst start to a Ween album ever), the band finally lands a punchline. “Object” tops even the most dated or misogynistic of pop tunes with lines such as, “You’re just a piece of meat/ And I am a butcher.”
The key to Ween’s success continues to be the duo’s straight-faced approach to silliness. When the music gets too cheesy (as on the terribly obnoxious instrumental opener, “Fiesta”), the songs faceplant. Ditto goes for the faux-techno of “Friends,” as it is becomes difficult to discern where the joke ends and where the song begins. Not that it matters; “Friends” is an awful song, plain and simple.
Ween fares better on La Cucaracha when reverting to more familiar lampoons. “Learnin’ to Love” recalls the twang of 12 Golden Country Greats, though considerably less vulgar. Always a target for the industry’s Explicit Content labels, Ween does not disappoint on the crude, almost embarrassingly enjoyable “My Own Bare Hands.” A cock-rock imitation seems as good a place as any for an awfully blunt penis joke.
But just when Ween gets a little momentum, the act collapses again with a series of duds. The blasé walks through reggae, soft and glam rock are empty exercises, and not much fun to listen to.
But you have to hand it to Ween – the band certainly does not falter quietly, nor does it go down without a fight. Even in one of its weaker efforts, Ween manages a defining moment with “Woman and Man.” The song roasts the prototype of a progressive-rock number for nearly 11 minutes, a simultaneous lesson on (and jab at) excessiveness. The song reaches a climax caught somewhere between Led Zeppelin and the Talking Heads, with wailing guitar solos, a flurry of bongos and pseudo-profundities (“Ocean and land/ Ocean is land covered with water”).
Ween ensures its continuing relevance with a handful of songs on La Cucaracha that aren’t as horrible as their peers. And though fans should have adjusted their expectations after the ill-fated Friends EP, La Cucaracha still comes as a disappointment. Until now, Ween has been characteristically spotty and wildly unpredictable to a fault. But after a while, the unpredictable becomes predictable, and parody approaches self-parody – a syndrome La Cucaracha falls victim to.
zherrm@umd.edu
