 "I don't care what Deaner says -- brownest album EVER." | 2009-06-04 |
| - Reviewed By User: AJX6BZCZC96I3 |
| I know there might be some debate about this statement -- but "The Pod" is easily the brownest album ever. It is by far my favorite Ween album. I totally get all those people that give it 1 star -- the first time I listened to it (which, incidentally was after hearing the radio-friendly "Chocolate and Cheese"), I'm pretty sure I cursed myself for purchasing it. But the more times I go through it, the more I love it. Now I want to hear Frank give Gene a pork roll egg and cheese with some gravy fries every chance I get. Kudos, Ween, for being the brownest act in town. |
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 "Revolutionary Insanity" | 2009-03-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2EFJI6THJC9TA |
| Ween's 2nd album, The Pod, is completely insane. The music is crazy, the lyrics are unexplainable, and the melodies are so twisted listeners can't tell which way is up. And WOW is it original, daring, and brilliant. The Pod is a huge leap forward from their debut, GodWeenSatan, but continues on the same path. It's a musical collage of demented sounds that transcends genres. The only way to describe Ween is to listen, and when you come back to planet Earth reflect on what you just heard, then listen again. There are several Ween albums I'd recommend before this one, but The Pod is a classic and must-have for any Weenhead. Standout tracks include Dr. Rock, Capt Fantasy, and Stallion 2. |
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| "Good Clean Fun ?" | 2008-04-17 |
| - Reviewed By kmfdm10392 |
| The Pod is the aural equivalent of a weekend drug bender. Equally sinister and silly, soothing and shocking, this is the sort of lo-fi walk through genre-hopping that only Ween can pull off. And the obscenities of tracks like "the Stallion, part 1" and "She F**ks Me" would sound like nothing more than exercises in juvenille boundary pushing if it weren't for the challenging and often brilliant music underneath. "Pollo Asado" alone makes the Pod worth buying. The hilarity of Gene Ween ordering Mexican take-out using the fakest Spanish accent since Pink Floyd's "A Spanish Piece" is not to be missed. |
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 "Two crazy cats give us a history of music through their drug-soaked eyes" | 2008-01-30 |
| - Reviewed By User: A8IFUOL8S9BZC |
| This treasure trove for junkies shows just how severe the Ween bros were addicted to hardcore substances, particularly brain-melting inhalants from the sound of things in these early recording daze. As scary, ugly, and primitive as these 23 schizophrenic pop-genre dabblings are in retrospect once the initial anti-musical gimmickry may have worn off for those revisiting, it would be hard to deny Ween did not sound destined for greater things with this self-contained, profound mess complete with underlying hints of mild brilliance spanning well over an hour of purely tweaked, self-mocking, and always eclectic genre interpretations. |
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| "Great Ween album" | 2008-01-18 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2UIHOJGQ2JLYM |
| Ween can always make their albums different from the next. And "The Pod" defiantly insures that. |
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| "Prancing Stallion Running Over Hillside" | 2007-05-03 |
| - Reviewed By samweisberg |
In the winter of 1995 I purchased Ween's 1991 album "The Pod," 23 tracks of Scotchguard-induced panic that often provoked its own creators to break out into giggling fits. It was extremely fitting that at the time I only bought cassette tapes, because after buying this album in CD format, years later, I detected that it just doesn't have the same chilling effect. The martian drone of a rolling tape adds lo-fi ambience to an already horrifyingly lo-fi album, recorded on a beat-up four track over ten months in 1990. Supposedly Dean and Gene Ween recorded everything in a fly-infested apartment (with barn attached) while attending college in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Eleven and a half years later it is the only album that forces me to envision where, when and in what state Ween recorded each track. Which drugs provoked which songs? Which room did they record each track in? What time of day? ("Boing," for instance, a quietly played blues jam with disturbingly hushed vocals boasting how "Rip Van Winkle can s-t on a shingle at dawn," sounds like it was recorded by one Ween member while another was sleeping on the couch in the same room, around six in the morning). Eerie from start to finish, genius to some, and bile to others, it is by far my favorite Ween album, far darker and far more chaotic than the lighthearted Phish-fan approved hippie soul records to come ("Chocolate and Cheese,""White Pepper") yet somehow less of a juvenile "my ex girlfriend sucks" rant than its predecessor ("God Ween Satan: The Oneness"). And there's plenty of truly awful but admittedly catchy pop to indicate the mockingly romantic side of Ween displayed on albums to come.
"The Pod" is a truly genreless concoction. There are glimpses of metal ("Sketches of Winkle") as well as purposefully awful homages to bubble-gum pop ("Oh My Dear (Falling in Love)") that usually fell into the #41-or-below position on 1970s billboard charts; the most spellbinding aspect of the record is Dean and Gene Ween's undying devotion to musical shrapnel and syrup alike, ugly dissonance here and uglier beauty there. Clearly, the helium voices and off-time, off-key guitars of "Oh My Dear" indicate that Ween are basically a joke, but not a G-rated parody joke along the lines of "Weird" Al Yankovic. "The Pod" is an R-rated joke album, with songs flangerized enough to shame J. Mascis, songs that tease the audience with their endless stopping and starting--"Go ahead, hate us," the creators smugly dare the listener, and you either crack up along with them or hate them.
I've had friends threaten to kill me for playing them Ween. Some people just don't get the brilliance of, say, a song like "She F-s Me." With its protagonist stupidly mumbling sweet (and selfish) nothings about the girl he's smitten with, among them "When I'm cold I know she's keeping me warm," while a disgruntled background voice, perhaps of the guy's retarded friend, repeatedly chants "Pork roll egg and cheese on a kaiser bun," it's quite simply the oddest love ballad in history, with the possible exception of Zappa's "Jewish Princess."
Indeed, "pork roll egg and cheese" is the flimsy metaphor of the album--there's even a song with that title. The album sure has its share of meaty tracks, cheesy tracks, and tracks that probably are the musical equivalent of undercooked eggs--chock full of protein but runny, mucusy (and what do you know, there IS a lyric somewhere about a "sweaty mucus bed"). The whole album, for me, is bringing beauty out of ugliness; it's as if the creators see a room full of sniffly-nosed toddlers screaming and coughing up snot, and to them it's music.
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