It feels like it's been a while since I've talked about any of my favorite bands.  Have I talked about Ween yet?  I don't think I have.

Ween is a band that I would confidently say is not for everybody, and yet I bet there's at least one Ween song that almost everyone would like.  It probably wouldn't even be the same song, although if it were just one song it might be Ocean Man.  That's a hard song to dislike, I think.  But the thing about Ween is they're incredibly eclectic.  They can sound like a completely different band from one song to the next, which is one of the things I've always thought was really cool.  They can also be really, really weird and sometimes abrasive.  They like to use humor and some of it I find genuinely funny, while some of it is definitely adolescent level at best.  And yet that weirdly becomes part of the charm as well.  

Ween was originally formed around 1984 I believe in New Hope, Pennsylvania by two teenage friends who met in typing class.  They created this whole sort of mythology about a demon god called the Boognish, and they assumed the names Gene and Dean Ween.  They evidently spent their teenage years doing a lot of drugs and recording a ton of music.  You can find some of their early self-released cassette albums online and while the enthusiasm is evident, they weren't very good in the early days.  There's no indication they'd become what they became, but in a way I like that.  Everyone's got to start somewhere and it takes some work to get really good.

Their first "official" release was 1990's God Ween Satan: The Oneness.  By any stretch of the imagination, this is an incredibly weird record.  There's a lot of screaming, a lot of profanity, a lot of noise, and a lot of weird sounding voices.  It's also got 26 tracks on it and is over 70 minutes long.  It's a lot to take in and it's not exactly an easy listen.  And yet, if you give it some time to get under your skin, it's actually a really good album!  But despite being their "first" album, it might not be a good entry point for the average person.  They've already improved a lot from their early days and there are some truly kick-ass guitar parts from Deaner and some diverse and strange vocal performances from Gener (they often refer to themselves thus).  A lot of the album kind of has this noisy punk vibe, but there's also a lot of variety including a twee pop, gospel, Prince, acoustic folk, and some stuff that's pretty much indescribable.  

Like I said, it might not be the best entry point.  I wasn't sure I liked it all that much at first.  I've heard it compared one time to a rambunctious toddler that's constantly pestering you for attention, and that's not too far off the mark.  Sometimes it's obnoxious and the humor is often juvenile and decidedly not P.C. 

So what actually makes this a good album?  As I mentioned there is a lot of diversity on display over the course of the album.  Another key selling point to Ween as a whole is Dean is a genuinely good guitarist  and Gene is a genuinely good vocalist.  (Sometimes Dean sings and sometimes Gene plays guitars but Dean is the main guitar guy and Gene is the main singer).  The other thing that is important to the Ween formula as a whole and is also true for this album is they're capable of writing really good songs when they want to.  And all of the weird sounds and voices and curse words and dumb jokes and parts where they mess up eventually becomes a big part of the appeal somehow.  They wouldn't be Ween without that stuff.  It all contributes to what they refer to as their "brown sound."  I can't entirely explain it and again to someone coming into this for the first time, it might be kind of off-putting.  But it genuinely does grow on you given the chance.

I do think Ween gets better down the road.  They have albums and songs that are more accessible to the neophyte and they eventually recruit a full band and use professional studios, so it's more than just two guys making weird songs in their living room.  There's a certain appeal to the early Ween albums though, and I'm glad they exist.  I'm glad the later more accessible stuff exists, too.  It's still weird, but it's a little less weird than this stuff.  And some songs really aren't that weird at all.  

Apparently I have a lot to say about Ween.  I've only discussed their first album so far and this is a fairly lengthy entry already, so I guess I'll stop here for now and probably talk some more about them later.  I feel like there was more I meant to talk about with some other bands I've already discussed, but I can't remember what I have and haven't written earlier this year.  Nonetheless, I will return to Ween.  There is definitely a lot more to talk about.