As the title implies, this is Gene and Dean Ween’s Nashville move. And for those familiar with the duo’s flexible and comedic musical nature: no, they’re not faking the cowboy swagger or shedding counterfeit tears in their beers just for the sake of digging through the one genre their previous records didn’t excavate. Backed by a who’s who of Music City session players, Ween has produced an authentic update of the late-’60s/early-’70s countrypolitan sound–weepy pedal steel, footloose harmonica, boogie piano, the Jordanaires crooning in the background, pristine production, pretty much all the fixins.

But if you’re looking for a collection of cornball breakup songs and half-baked cowboy tales, well, as Judas Priest says, you’ve got another thing coming. Gene and Dean, after all, have their own standards to live up to; and they’ve never above lowering them. So the breakup song (”Piss Up A Rope”) is viciously upbeat; the sinner’s repentance is titled “Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain”; and even the one serious song, the Lennon-esque “You Were The Fool,” contains the kind of cosmic couplets country fans would normally have to reach pretty far afield (toward, say, Gram Parsons) to find. Such Ween-foolery allows Gene and Dean to have their country, in a most heartfelt way, and eat it too.

Tracklisting
1. I’m Holding You
2. Japanese Cowboy
3. Piss up a Rope
4. I Don’t Wanna Leave You on the Farm
5. Pretty Girl
6. Powder Blue
7. Mister Richard Smoker
8. Help Me Scrape the Mucus off My Brain
9. You Were the Fool
10. Fluffy

Professional Reviews
Spin (8/96, p.103) – Reasonably Good – “…What makes 12 GOLDEN COUNTRY GREATS a decent Ween record is its transposition of real country into the world of post-indie-rock smart-asses…”

Q (9/96, p.124) – 3 Stars – Good – “…mimicking a myriad of country styles and stereotypes while lyrically tipping the stetson towards the stoned yoof of alternative America…”

Alternative Press (10/96, p.108) – “…Not only have Ween gone country, but they’ve done it up right….The results are as perverse as ever, juxtaposing fairly mainstream musical arrangements…with bizarre lyrics and imagery…”

Melody Maker (8/3/96, p.50) – Recommended – “…Bitter, nerdish misogyny was never conveyed with such tender beauty as on this album…”

Related Posts
Ween – La Cucaracha
Ween – Chocolate & Cheese

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.

Tracklisting
1. Take Me Away
2. Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)
3. Freedom Of ‘76
4. I Can’t Put My Finger On It
5. Tear For Eddie, A
6. Roses Are Free
7. Baby Bitch
8. Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?
9. Drifter In The Dark
10. Voodoo Lady
11. Joppa Road
12. Candi
13. Buenos Tardes, Amigo
14. H.I.V. Song, The
15. What Deaner Was Talkin’ About
16. Don’t Shit Where You Eat

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/29/94-1/12/95, p.176) – “…Zappa is their ultimate papa, and while they can’t match his virtuoso chops, Ween’s loopy smarts and the dizzying variety of their parodic targets make CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE the rare joke album that repays repeated listens…”

Spin (10/94, p.111) – Highly Recommended – “…catchy as chlamydia. Ween seems to have potty-trained its predilection for lengthy funk deconstructions….Room is left then for a host of new carnival rides…”

Entertainment Weekly (10/14/94, p.60) – “…You know when you meet someone so impossibly weird it almost gives you a headache–yet you think about the things that person said for weeks? Ween’s music is like that. These die-hard oddballs are fascinatingly eclectic…” – Rating: B

Related Posts
Ween – La Cucaracha

On its first studio album since 2003’s QUEBEC, the ever-mischievous Pennsylvania-based weirdos Ween unveil another set of skewed tunes that have seemingly been plucked from some strange Willy Wonka-like realm. After the willfully cheesy horn-led intro of “Fiesta,” LA CUCARACHA drifts into the ether with the fantasy-themed “Blue Balloon,” which, along with the likeminded “Spirit Walker,” features the duo’s signature tweaked vocals and quirky arrangements. Elsewhere Dean and Gene Ween mix things up with the twangy “Learnin’ to Love” and the snotty punk-pop ditty “Shamemaker,” capping things off with the slinky Bowie-like “Your Party,” a track that boasts sax master David Sanborn. Largely staying within the same brightly colored palette as QUEBEC, LA CUCARACHA is a fine addition to Ween’s gleefully bizarre catalogue.

Track Listing
1. Fiesta
2. Blue Balloon
3. Friends
4. Object
5. Learnin To Love
6. With My Own Bare Hands
7. The Fruit Man
8. Spirit Walker
9. Shamemaker
10. Sweetheart
11. Lullaby
12. Woman & Man
13. Your Party

Professional Reviews
Uncut (p.119) – 3 stars out of 5 — “[With] hillbilly, vague psychedelia and house. ‘Object’ is a highlight, as is the lovely ‘Sweetheart In The Summer’…”

Mojo (Publisher) (p.99) – 4 stars out of 5 — “[S]imply let LA CUCARACHA happen and enjoy how much Gene and Dean toy with and transgress musical forms while still playing them to a high degree of invention, proficiency and sincerity.”

Blender (Magazine) (p.154) – 3.5 stars out of 5 — “When it comes to creating nuanced and irreverent, yet oddly touching pop and rock simulacra, no one really touches [them]…”