[.ca] La Cucaracha (Advisory) (Digi)

From Amazon.com:
For a band entering their third decade of creative collaboration (counting from their late '80s self-released cassettes), you might think Ween would have started to mellow, maybe release the occasional children's album, a la They Might Be Giants. However, it's clear from their first studio album in four years that Dean and Gene Ween have lost none of their wonderful weirdness. Don't let the title mislead you into thinking La Cucaracha is a single-genre exercise on the order of 1996's Nashville-nailing 12 Golden Country Greats. Sure, it kicks off with mariachi-esque "Fiesta", but the subsequent 12 tracks contain explorations of demented reggae, faux English accents, lo-fi techno, boot-stompin' bluegrass, a bongo-driven epic jam about the origins of the universe, songs about balloons and killing your girlfriend ("Object" is as creepy a tale as anything they've ever produced), and a soothing-as-Kaopectate sax solo from smooth jazz legend David Sanborn. If you're a follower of the church of Ween, it's as comforting as a heap of mashed potatoes and meatloaf, covered (of course) with a ladle of brown gravy. --Ben Heege

the bull:
it's hit and miss. some songs are as brilliant as any past efforts, some are just too cheesy. I can appreciate their effort to parody some of the world's more lame musical creations, however at times it just sounds too much like the total garbage it mocks. I would like to pluck a handful of tunes from this effort and replace them with the first four tracks off of the recently released friends ep. This would, in my opinion, make Cucaracha a solid collection of material. If you don't have the Shinola release yet, get it instead.

• Fiesta
• Blue Balloon
• Friends
• Object
• Learnin' to Love
• With My Own Bare Hands
• The Fruit Man
• Spirit Walker
• Shamemaker
• Sweetheart
• Lullaby
• Woman and Man
• Your Party