Ween CHOCOLATE & CHEESE

Ween: Dean Ween, Gene Ween (various instruments).
Additional personnel: Andrew Weiss, Claude Coleman, Mean Ween, Patricia Frey, Stephan, Scott Lowe.
All songs written or co-written by Ween.
Personnel: Gene Ween (vocals); Dean Ween (guitar).
Audio Mixer: Andrew Weiss.
Recording information: Graphic Sound Studios, Ringoes, NJ.
Photographers: John Kuezala; John Kuczala; Danny Clinch.
Unknown Contributor Roles: Claude Coleman; Scott Lowe; Mean Ween; Patricia Frey Stephan.
It's easy to be over-whelmed by Gene and Dean Ween's music. Recorded in basements and home-studios, their albums sound like composite sketches of an immense, diverse record library (Prince, Zeppelin, America, Funkadelic, you name it), splashing together lyrical canvases that draw on both a post-modern slack brilliance of the everyday and their own perverse private world. They have the eccentric's gift for incorporating the ludicrous into their musical mythology, but seem equally at home playing it straight (which they don't do often). Like a heavy breakfast, Ween take the better part of the day to digest--but once inside the tummy, they sure taste yummy.
CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE is a lighter snack than any of Ween's previous releases primarily because of an outward focus (quite loose, actually) on the various musics of the seventies. "Freedom Of '76" celebrates Philadelphia's blue-eyed soul sound, "Voodoo Lady" lifts its melody from the Talking Heads and its catch-phrase from A Taste Of Honey, and "Take Me Away" could be a Vegas-era Elvis outtake if it didn't rock so much. But--Gene and Dean being progress-minded folks--CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE never disintegrates into nostalgia, or gets bogged down by any single theme. Thus, you get singular classics like "I Can't Put My Finger On It," with its faux-Arabic textures, and the haunting "Buenos Tardes Amigo," a Spaghetti Western narrative that can proudly rub shoulders with Marty Robbins' "El Paso" and any other canonized outlaw tale.

• Format: CD
• Genre: Pop