Reviews > CDs

Ween: Caesar

Self-released

There are a lot of reasons to love Ween, nearly all spelled out over the two discs of demos for 2003’s Quebec —recently uploaded to Facebook by guitarist Mickey Melchiando. Going on five years since the last Ween album, Caesar’s 14 previously (and still technically) unreleased songs are more than welcome—a pretty great Ween album on their own. There’s plenty of Gene Ween/Aaron Freeman’s hilarious nihilism, a leitmotif of nearly literal self-denial in the stupid voices threading the song “You Can Go Shit in Your Hat (Matt)” (“Why don’t you do some more blow, you homo?”) and the psychedelic lounge retardation of “Hello Johnny.” But there is also genuinely affecting deep stoner folk like “Someday,” mapping the despairing emotional caverns somewhere below Gener’s weirdo world and the bummed realities of adulthood with still more stupid voices to spare. “I’m alright, I’m still drunk, just so you know… I watch Simpsons ,” he sings on “Eulogy for David Anderson.” Prince-biting sex jams like “Ambrosia” and the tenderly resigned dirge of “I Fell in Love Today” both turn around the fleeting natural tides of mirth and daily ache, a hard-to-hold sliver of realness disappearing somewhere behind the Boognish.