Currently Listening

A glog about the ups and downs of the "album shuffle" function.
Ween - The Friends EP It’s hard to know where to begin reviewing any Ween record, least of all, their sole EP, 2007’s Friends. A 5 song offering that came out a few months before La Cucaracha was released, Friends isn’t a particularly stunning Ween document, but it’s not a bad one. The title track found itself in a rerecord on La Cucaracha, but the EP version is pure electropop elation, a goofy-as-fuck song about the simplest tenets of friendship, that - I’m fairly certain - started out as a joke about how many times Gener could say “Friend” in a single chorus. The EP is full of the things you expect from Ween, and if you weren’t into them prior to it, you won’t be into them now. “King Billy”, the album’s reggae contribution is kind of painful to sit through, but you get Gener’s horrible Jamaican accent and an almost unbearable what-sounds-kinda-like-a-theremin-or-vocoder solo that - depending on your sense of humor - is either amazing or the worst thing ever recorded. However, the inclusion of “King Billy” seems kind of redundant when the dub/salsa jam (and altogether better song) “Light Me Up” is also on the record. “I Got to Put the Hammer Down” offers up the druggy references and sophomoric sex jokes that run throughout Ween’s catalog. When I revisit Ween now, sometimes I wonder if I’m not childish enough to still listen to Ween. I certainly don’t listen to them as much as I did a few years back, but I think the amount of smiling I did during the probably-offensive and homo-erotic Wilson-Phillips-esque “Slow Down Boy” proves that I’ll never really grow out of this band.

Ween - The Friends EP

It’s hard to know where to begin reviewing any Ween record, least of all, their sole EP, 2007’s Friends. A 5 song offering that came out a few months before La Cucaracha was released, Friends isn’t a particularly stunning Ween document, but it’s not a bad one. The title track found itself in a rerecord on La Cucaracha, but the EP version is pure electropop elation, a goofy-as-fuck song about the simplest tenets of friendship, that - I’m fairly certain - started out as a joke about how many times Gener could say “Friend” in a single chorus. The EP is full of the things you expect from Ween, and if you weren’t into them prior to it, you won’t be into them now. “King Billy”, the album’s reggae contribution is kind of painful to sit through, but you get Gener’s horrible Jamaican accent and an almost unbearable what-sounds-kinda-like-a-theremin-or-vocoder solo that - depending on your sense of humor - is either amazing or the worst thing ever recorded. However, the inclusion of “King Billy” seems kind of redundant when the dub/salsa jam (and altogether better song) “Light Me Up” is also on the record. “I Got to Put the Hammer Down” offers up the druggy references and sophomoric sex jokes that run throughout Ween’s catalog. When I revisit Ween now, sometimes I wonder if I’m not childish enough to still listen to Ween. I certainly don’t listen to them as much as I did a few years back, but I think the amount of smiling I did during the probably-offensive and homo-erotic Wilson-Phillips-esque “Slow Down Boy” proves that I’ll never really grow out of this band.

  1. currentlylistening posted this