Ween
Chocolate And Cheese
»
Ween
Chocolate And Cheese
Elektra, 1994
RiYL: They Might Be Giants, The Fugs, Boyz II Men |
"See, there's the Ocean Man, who has a Chevy with a mopar cam. Then there's the Child Without an Eye, who might be Irish. Although 'Buckingham Green' sounds English. But, you know, it's all about water. And all the songs are waltzes for some reason."
OK, that settles it. The grab bag albums are easier.
About as easy on the ears as Chocolate & Cheese, which is no more linear than its three predecessors but a whole lot prettier. Wisely deciding that they'd gone as far as a tape-backed two-piece as they could, Dean and Gene Ween assembled a crack band and went to work exploring the range of new options their playing allowed.
Dean's guitar is set free from the murk of The Pod to accomplish things even we diehards couldn't have imagined, like the flamenco/Morricone solo on "Buenas Tardes Amigo," the wah-wah overkill of "Voodoo Lady," and the porn soundtrack slow jam "A Tear For Eddie." Gene meanwhile (mostly) stops messing with tape speeds and just sings, doing an Elvis impersonator impersonation on "Take Me Away," impossible falsetto on "Freedom of '76," and whatever the hell it is you call what he's doing on "I Can't Put My Finger On It."
There's no such thing as an archetypal Ween song, but there is a certain kind of corrupted, sproingy pop tune it does repeatedly well. Cheese boasts the lush vocals of "What Deaner Was Talking About," the upbeat gobbledygook "Roses Are Free" (covered by Phish!), and in summation, the close-harmony duet "Don't Shit Where You Eat." On the wilder side there's the incredibly disturbing "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)," echo-and-melodica sketch "Drifter In The Dark," and "Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony," among the most evil songs ever written by anyone.
"Baby Bitch," by contrast, despite the narrator's "fuck you, you stankin' ass ho," kiss-off, is a well-written breakup song: "Came into the room and you saw my girl / and you asked her how long it's been / two years, she said, and you shook your head / I'm surprised it's gone on that long." That's nothing compared to the seven-minute psychodrama of "Buenas Tardes," wherein Gene, in goofy accent throughout, tells a bizarre story of murder and vengeance south of the Rio Grande: "I looked at every fiesta / for you I wanted to meet / maybe I'd sell you a chicken / with poison interlaced with the meat." You have to give a gringo props for rhyming "meet" with "meat."
Rather than hemming Dean and Gene in, the band allows them to go to weirder places still. You have to love the "Kashmir"-esque Arabian Nights music that emerges under the final verse of "Can't Put My Finger On It" for no particular reason. Hand percussion enlivens "Candi" and "Voodoo Lady." Then there's the carousel-ride music to "The HIV Song," which could be a cheap attempt to offend, or a sophisticated comment on lunatic fringe AIDS researchers. I'll let you decide.
Although the methods diverge in as many ways as two white guys -- one with pipes of gold and the other with the fastest hands since Jimmy Page -- can muster, the intent remains the same throughout. Ween is going to drive you crazy with that boogie-oogie-oogie-oogie-oogie-oogie-oogie, and who among you is man enough to stop them?
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.