What?: Ween's 5th album, sitting between two of my favourites (94's Chocolate and Cheese and 97's The Mollusk)
Why?: Because Ween. Because I fell in love with this crazy crazy band and bought all the things.
Tell me more!:
This album cops a lot of flack from the hard-core fans. It's Ween sticking to one style, when half the fun of Ween is their varied styles. It's Ween playing with a real band instead of drum machines and tape-manipulation, when arguably half the fun is Ween pulling music out of the awful.
Personally, I love Ween with a band, and with good production... but I'm not a huge fan of country music. This album has Ween playing with various Nashville musicians I'm not going to pretend to have heard of, who have worked with the likes of Elvis, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, and who have appeared on pretty much everything country ever. They sound fantastic.
Regardless, it's still one of my least favourite of the less-brown-sounding Ween albums. I like "Power Blue" (even though my copy is cruelly cut), "I'm Holding You", "Japanese Cowboy" (aka. Chariots Of Fire) and I'm rather ashamed of loving "Mister Richard Smoker" (is it hugely homophobic?), but the rest doesn't blow me away. But even the worst of Ween is great.
"Piss Up A Rope" and "Help Me Scrape the Mucus off My Brain" seem to be big live favourites, and they're fun, but they're just too... serious... It's not that I demand Ween be amusing and crazy, but... bah.
On relistening to this I had expected "I'm Waving My Dick In The Wind" to be on it, but it's on the album after, "The Mollusk". It probably isn't really fair to watch a single Ween album. A single Ween album is simply another pile of awesome added to their back catalogue...
Meanwhile, I highly recommend you read this excellent interview with the album's producer, Ben Vaughn from 2011, celebrating the 15th anniversary of the album's release where he describes the music as "blue" and the difficulties getting classic country artists to work on the album due to Ween's reputation. Or Hank Shteamer's 33 1/3 on "Chocolate And Cheese" which is full of brilliant, and the best of the 33 1/3 series I've read.
5/10
