Ween

Ween—for those uninitiated into their somewhat cultish following—is a band that writes the kind of songs you might have written when you were 12, adopting various musical styles and rigging them up with lyrics that walk the line between juvenile and crass. Only they do it surprisingly well—most of the time, anyway.

Now, on their 11th full-length album, Ween seems to have lost some of the magic that earned them a name in the alternative music genre. “La Cucaracha” focuses heavily on satirizing various musical styles, and strays away from Ween’s traditional biting high school humor.

One of the biggest problems with “La Cucaracha” is its lack of any continuity whatsoever. “La Cucaracha” experiments with something different on every song, switching not-so-seamlessly between airy pop, reggae, progressive rock, techno, and even country.

“Fiesta,” the opening track, blasts listeners with squealing horns and an upbeat, south-of-the-border feel that offers a false promise of good things to come. The next track, “Blue Balloon,” transports listeners to a mellow, nonsensical world that sounds like something Captain Beefheart would create.

Ween has experimented with different sounds before, but with punchy songs that would at least inspire laughter and often had some shock value (e.g. “Baby Bitch,” and “Spinal Meningitis (Got me Down)” off “Chocolate and Cheese”).

Unfortunately, this album generally lacks the crude, silly, and striking teenage humor of its predecessors.

“Object” and “My Own Bare Hands” have some satirical merit, making light of the objectification of women and the rock star mentality, respectively.

But the album as a whole is somewhat dry, and even when it ventures into the territory of outright silliness as in “Friends” or “Shamemaker,” it lacks the zing of older tracks like “Zoloft” or “The HIV Song.” Ween has turned from pitching out pleasurable bunk and shrewd criticism to basically just compiling drivel.

On a redeeming note, “La Cucaracha” does emphasize the musical prowess of this tireless group of oddballs. Though their foray into reggae in “The Fruit Man” is somewhat drab, they show themselves as masterful mimics of the country music style in “Learnin’ to Love” and channel such artists as Cher, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Donovan, and The Doors in other tracks.

As an album independent of the Weenian corpus, “La Cucaracha” isn’t bad. It’s quirky, it’s fun, and it rarely bores. It’s such a motley album that it would be difficult for anyone to dislike all of the tracks therein. Yet when compared with Ween’s previous stuff, “La Cucaracha” can’t stand up. It’s more of a showcase for Ween’s musical stylings than for their unique lyrical capacity.

—Reviewer Joshua J. Kearney can be reached at kearney@fas.harvard.edu.