If you've got 10 years, I've got a science project for you. Stick a tape in your VCR, record an hour of BET (preferably the show with the computer-generated hostess, if that's still on), pull out the tape and set it out in the sun. Let it sit for a decade. Put it back in the VCR, and hit play.

Congrats. You've just made your first Ween album. Repeat if desired.

Ween, New Hope's favorite inhalant-loving sons, might take a little more care with their music than you did with your well-baked Fuji, but the end result is basically the same. The woozy, Scotchgarded antics of not-actually-brothers Dean and Gene Ween can sound a bit, well, damaged. But if you like your music as lighthearted as it is lightheaded, you'd be well advised to pick up Pure Guava, the band's pitch-shifted, brain-bent opus.

After a brilliantly scorched debut (GodWeenSatan:The Oneness) and a slightly misshapen follow-up, Pure Guava is the perfect realization of the band's sound, a wild head-trip of a record that's as tuneful as it is twisted. Throwing lo-fi psychedelia, Zappa-esque toilet humor and innumerable pop hooks into the mix, Guava is the finest document of the meeting of Ween's musical prowess and complete and total insanity to date. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll probably need a shower when it's all over.

Ween's sense of humor isn't for everybody. I don't know what "Big Jilm" is about, really, but just because I find it funny doesn't mean you necessarily will. "Touch My Tooter" is a blues-rock song about, well, guess. "I Saw Gener Cryin' In His Sleep" is whistle-laden drum machine ragtime, which, simply by virtue of being nerdy about music, I have to find amusing. And, well, the less said about "Poop Ship Destroyer," the better.

Will you chuckle along to Pure Guava? Well, let's just say if you didn't enjoy Bruce Campbell's performance in Army of Darkness, you're probably not going to dig on Ween. If you did, though, here's your new favorite band.

It's not all poop ship destruction, and that's definitely Guava's greatest strength. "Push Th' Little Daisies" is as tender a love song as any; it just happens to be sung in the highest voice possible.

"Sarah," too, sounds like Kiss's "Beth" played at the wrong RPM, entirely too sweet to scoff at but too weird to play at your wedding. Don't expect, like, Nick Drake or something, but Ween can pull on the ol' heartstrings when it wants to. It saves Pure Guava from being needlessly nerdy like, say, They Might Be Giants, while still maintaining a certain whacked-out charm.

You can't talk about Ween without mentioning the fact that, through it all, the brothers are astoundingly competent musicians. Though Dean saved most of his guitar heroics for Ween's later records, Guava's slinky keyboard-pop and grimy genre-jumping are just as impressive. Joke bands are a dime a dozen, but there's a reason the boys in Ween have been as popular as they have for so long. You can't help but wonder, if they'd just settle down and (as they did, sort of, on last year's impressive Quebec) grow up for a minute, whether Ween could really turn out some classics.

But then "Tender Situation" comes on, and it's suggested that you "taste the waste," and you realize that, all joking aside, it's a classic, too. Get that videotape off the sidewalk and go buy Pure Guava (and the other two I mentioned, and The Mollusk). Does humor belong in music? Not always. But when it works, man, is it ever pure guava.