Quebec

Quebec Review

Why are you here. Maybe because you have sampled other music from Ween or maybe your lost. I won't labor on the subject, lets get straight to the album. These guys have so much universal talent that only could allow for a production like this, yet not enough virtuosity to keep them from being stuck on one formula. Its to our benefit. These guys can ape just about any popular music genre and beat the originals at their own game. Be prepared to change gears at times. If you listen to the first track, you would think you would have stumbled across a long lost Motorhead masterpiece.... ah..what. Keep going... you will find traces of everything under the sun here. If you are a musichead in general and are open to all sorts of music, you will be saying 'hey that sounds like' so many times it becomes a mute point. The songs stand on their own merits. Look out for sounds of Marcy Playground, Electronic Chill, Yo Gabba Gabba, Steely Dan.... and on and on. And yet in its entirety its just our friends Ween. With Ween there is always some tounge in cheek stuff going on, but there is also pure beauty and heart. Not something most people frequently consume because of its broad range. I don't want to compare Ween to the Flaming Lips, but for Lips fans, if you remember a quazi-punk group turning into a lush music making machine.... this is... to me... the same sort of process... raw entity evolves into lush music landscapes...and they have long since arrived. Not sure if we can call Motorhead Lush tho... forget it. Just check it out.

Quebec Overview

How does one encapsulate the mischievous musical conceits of Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo, aka Gene and Dean Ween? Infinitely less self-conscious than the smirky They Might Be Giants, yet possessed of a downright Zappa-esque sense of the perverse, Ween returns here from the problematic, if illusory, mainstreaming that characterized 2000's White Pepper to embrace an artistic tack that seems as focused as an errant cluster bomb. While eclecticism for its own sake has often yielded painful self-indulgence, G&D's is sublime enough to seem virtually pre-conscious. The white-trash thrash of "It's Gonna Be a Long Night" dispenses with the expected parody quotient early on, shrewdly clearing the stage for moody doses of psychedelia that are variously driving ("Transdermal Celebration"), dirgy ("Among His Tribe"), and languorously eerie ("Captain"). But, perhaps conscious of reputations to be maintained, those dreamy, chem-friendly spells are variously broken by the perfect '70s country-pop of "Chocolate Town," the pocket epic "The Argus," and tracks that somehow recall both Captain Beefheart and their own haphazard side-career scoring cartoons and other TV fare. There's something here for everyone, to be sure--but closer to Ween's antic hearts, something to annoy everyone as well. --Jerry McCulley

Available at Amazon Check Price Now!

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 15, 2010 16:27:04