Desert Island Recordings: The Pod by Ween

Highway Hi-Fi Podcast

Ween set forth on a career-long ambition to tear down standard music industry conventions by hook or by crook. To take that which is weird, obnoxious, and unclean, and show it as important as the falsely pristine parts of life. They were never more successful in this endeavor than on their 76 minute slog of a second record, The Pod. Recorded alone together in Dean and Gene Ween’s apartment that was a converted barn smack dab in the middle of a horse field while both were suffering through mono and high on, well, probably everything. The record sounds like you need to scrape off layers and layers of shit and grime to get the pop tunes hidden within. Underneath the juvenile jokes, the impressive assemblage of vulgarity, fast food orders, molasses-dipped song-smithing, sonic fuckery, squishy atmosphere, and overall friendly misanthropic posturing is a solid and comprehensive American pop music revue. Dinner theater at the slaughterhouse.

So, tonight’s offering...another scoop of isolation but this time with a heaping of flies, scotch guard, and glandular fever. If you’ve ever woken up and found that someone had taken a deuce on your kitchen floor, you’ve already sort of heard this masterpiece. The sludgiest, brownest record of Ween’s illustrious decades long trouncing of indie music. Come on, it's a beautiful night for a walk on the beach, wouldn't you say?

Listen to Fewer Owls, mentioned in this episode!

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