Ween: The Pod (2LP, Fuscus edition, brown & cream vinyl) [ATO]

Why you'll love it

The Fuscus edition spreads the album over two LPs in brown & cream vinyl. Dean and Gene Ween recorded the lot on a Tascam four-track cassette recorder, and it's as strange and as funny as anything they've made.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Fuscus edition
• Brown & cream vinyl

About the album

Most albums are named after a song or a feeling. This one is named after a flat. Dean and Gene Ween called their place on Van Sant Road in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania, The Pod, and between January and October 1990 they filled tape after tape there, two of which became this record. Shimmy-Disc put it out on September 20, 1991, with Andrew Weiss producing and mixing.

Everything sounds gloriously murky, voices are pitched up and down, and the songs lurch from "Strap On That Jammy Pac" to "Dr. Rock" to "Captain Fantasy." "Pollo Asado," a man ordering Mexican food over a groove, came from Gene's short stint at a restaurant in New Hope, while "Alone" credits Robyn Hitchcock for musical inspiration, and "Pork Roll Egg And Cheese" is a love letter to a New Jersey breakfast. The cover lifts the 1975 The Best of Leonard Cohen sleeve and gives it a very different face.

Elektra remastered and reissued it in 1995, after Pure Guava and Chocolate and Cheese had won them a bigger crowd. It also holds a song called "Mononucleosis," written by two chaps who had it at the time, which we believe is what's known as method songwriting.

Also at Kops: more Ween on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Chocodog / ATO (cat# CDR2023A), a reissue of the 1991 album.