After a couple of albums that saw the band straying toward slightly more "mature" material, La Cucaracha finds Ween firmly back in Chocolate and Cheese territory - at least in spirit, if not necessarily in sound and style.

If you had missed the days of Ween being wildly eclectic, jumping from genre to genre, then La Cucaracha is likely going to please you. New listeners, however, might still be left scratching their heads a bit. That is, of course, assuming that new listeners even take chances like this anymore.

The first reaction to a Ween album for the seasoned fan isn't typically what it is for the uninitiated - who might be counted on to utter phrases like "Did they just say that?" and "This is so wrong."

No, long time fans know what to expect when it comes to the lyrical part of the equation - being offensive is simply part of the fun for the Dean and Gene Ween, and no one is exempted, which makes it fair in a perverse sort of way. What fans look for is just what the band took on as inspiration, because if one other thing is true about Ween, it's that they're masters at mimicking their idols - even if you can't quite figure out who it is.

That's not to say that everything they do is imitation, it's just that they do it so well. La Cucaracha's, closing track "Your Party," (which features the saxophone of David Sanborn - a fan of the band, believe it or not,) elicits the vibe of smooth early 80's pop, the kind of stuff that was soaked in coke that Bryan Ferry was so good at doing, while "Sweetheart in the Summer" sounds a bit like Nick Lowe's brand of rootsy country-rock.

And often it's just taking on a genre in particular - sludgy reggae in "The Fruit Man," good ol' country, a genre they spent an entire album exploring (1996's 12 Golden Country Greats,) with "Learnin' to Love," and most surprising and entertainingly on this album, the electro-disco of "Friends," with its ambiguously gay "let's be more than just friends" message (that is, frankly, almost entirely due to the music itself).

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

"Blue Balloon," bouncy and dreamy at the same time, bears those odd, helium-influenced vocals that marked early Ween tunes, and calls for repeated listens. It doesn't sound like anyone or anything other than Ween - and that's just fine.