Ween confronts the norms of pop music in revisiting their third album 40 years thereafter.
Forty years following Gene and Dean Ween’s original release of their third album, Chocolate and Cheese, Ween’s deluxe reissue features 15 previously unreleased tracks in addition to a remastering of the original album.
With founding members Dean and Gene Ween sharing guitar and vocal duties, Andrew Weiss on bass and Claude Coleman on drums, Ween’s third album is a melting pot of psychedelia, progressive, punk and pop. This multi-genre influence is scattered across the album, heard as the opener “Take Me Away” introduces a bluesy-punk feel before an abrupt shift to the following psych-pop “Spinal Meningitis.” Although the Ween duo channeled their talents into crafting eclectic, nontraditional pop music — their chops as musicians are obvious as “A Tear for Eddie” features a five minute instrumental break, within Chocolate and Cheese, rife with a beautifully executed guitar and drum arrangement. While, “Roses Are Free,” employs a dense mix of guitar, percussion and synthesizers. Ultimately, these contrasts feel as though they draw notes from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, with an incredible musicality that serves as a foundation for the tongue-in-cheek, even downright weird themes and lyrics present in tracks such as “Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?”
In addition to the remastered versions of the album’s original track list, the deluxe edition of Chocolate and Cheese’s 15 bonus tracks carry on the eclectic nature of the original LP 40 years later in the laid back “Warm Socks” and bluesy “Junkie Boy.”
In Ween’s playful, at times nursery-rhyme styled works, Chocolate and Cheese parallels musically what South Park is to television: grotesque, satirical content under the initial guise of a projected younger audience, which aside from the LP’s provocative cover art, remains incredibly well thought out and executed, all while not taking itself too seriously. Where albums, bands and genres can often feel as though they are plastic reproductions of themselves both sonically and thematically — Ween forgoes any idea of what elements are necessary for an album to be commercially successful and instead allows their creativity to flow.
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