The Pod is the second studio album by American rock band Ween. It was released on September 20, 1991, by Shimmy-Disc.
Production
The album was recorded from January to October 1990, at the Pod on Van Sant Road in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania. Recording concluded one month prior to the release of their debut on November 16. The album was derived from two tapes titled the Bilboa tape and the Big Timmy Wasserman tape. Both tapes contain not only demo versions of songs on the album, but many outtakes not used on any album or tracks used on future albums. All of the songs have a muddy quality to them, due to being recorded on a Tascam four-track cassette recorder, and many of the vocals are manipulated in strange ways.
Robyn Hitchcock is credited with "musical inspiration" for the track "Alone", which borrows elements from his song "Bones in the Ground".
The track "Pollo Asado" is a comedic skit with a man ordering Mexican food over music. The song was inspired by Gene Ween's time briefly working at a Mexican restaurant in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Title and album cover
The album takes its name from the band's apartment where the album was recorded, which the band nicknamed "The Pod". The album's cover art is a takeoff of the 1975 The Best of Leonard Cohen cover; Ween simply positioned a photo of part-time bassist Mean Ween's head (wearing a "Scotchgard powered bong") over Cohen's cover art, and altered the title text and other graphics. Shimmy-Disc Video was a series of VHS tapes created by Shimmy Disc containing music videos from artists who were signed to the label. These tapes were never remastered or re-released, nor were the music videos.
Shimmy-Disc released a vinyl version of The Pod in 1991. It was also remastered and reissued by Elektra Records in 1995, after the relative success of Ween albums such as Pure Guava (1992) and Chocolate and Cheese (1994).
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In 1993, the album was named one of the 20 best albums of 1992 by Spin. Trouser Press wrote: "Less inflamed and inspired than the first album (blame, perhaps, the five cans of Scotchguard the band claims to have inhaled), The Pod lurches, howls, fuzzes and strums through sloppy creations that are mostly one hit short of a high." In a 1999 review of the album, The Stranger called it "excellent" and wrote that "someday, classical music students will write dissertations on The Pod." Kerrang! wrote that "the electrified production on tracks like 'Dr. Rock' and 'Sketches of Winkle' is utterly unhinged, while the barking, aimless pace of 'The Stallion' (either part, really) feels like the sweaty blatherings of the most poisonous of drunks."
In a September 1992 Spin interview, Faith No More singer Mike Patton mentioned it as one of his favorite albums, and around this time his band also did live covers of the Pure Guava track "The Goin' Gets Tough From the Getgo". In later years, Aphex Twin named it one of his 10 favorite albums of all time (making it one of two Ween albums on the list, the other being Pure Guava).
Track listing
Personnel
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- Dean Ween – lead vocals, backing vocals, acoustic & electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drum machine, drums on "Strap on That Jammy Pac"
- Gene Ween – lead vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboard, drum machine
Additional musicians
- Mean Ween - cover model, bass guitar on “Alone”
Technical
- Dean Ween – engineer, art direction
- Gene Ween – engineer, art direction
- Andrew Weiss – producer, mixing
- Michael McGrath – art direction
- Logorythms – cover art, design
- Howie Weinberg – remastering