Chocolate & Cheese

Chocolate & Cheese is the best and most accessible album by Ween. The production is very good (not lo-fi) and the songs are clearly finished. Apart from some adolescent fun most songs show the great craftmanship of these two guys resulting in classics like "Freedom of '76", "Baby Bitch", "Buenas Tardes Amigo", "What Deaner Was Talkin' About", "A Tear for Eddie" and "Don't Shit Where You Eat"

Ween is severely underrated. Humor can be very divisive, but their skill and versatility are no joke.

New to me. Amazing

Weird but I kind of liked it. Not what I expected. I’ve heard Ween songs before but never an album. Will check out more.

Settle in for fun & weird lyrics plus kicky bass.

A lot of different genres, and funky lyrics

Ween is nuts, gotta love it

Great choice. Quirky, soulful, creative, absurd in all the right ways. What you really get a sense of here is the love Ween have for music. They embrace various genres with an ease that's rare in music. There's also an inherent humor in these songs that mostly lands pretty well without sounding overly smug or ironic, another skill few artists possess. My only real critique would be that there's such a thing as being a little too eclectic, to the point where there isn't a natural sense of flow, particularly on a good chunk of the back half. Fave Songs: What Deaner Was Talkin' About, A Tear for Eddie, Freedom of '76, Baby Bitch, Voodoo Lady, Don't Shit Where You Eat

I kind of prefer Ween's earlier lo-fi/home recording era, college radio memories of spinning The Pod on vinyl, but there's still a lot to like in this studio era, and a very respectable ratio of their wierdness survived the major label transition.

I had completely forgotten that Ween ever existed. Nice reminder. Voodoo Lady is an awesomeness track.

You had me at circus music.

A deeply unsettling and kind of funky trip

Ween is one of my favorite bands of all time and I'm happy that somebody finally submitted an album of theirs (hope to see The Mollusk and Quebec on here as well someday so I can gush about Transdermal Celebration). It's quirky and weird, seemingly never taking itself seriously, which might put some people off, but the guys are very talented and even the "joke songs" have a lot of effort and care poured into them. If you want somebody to truly understand what this band is about past vaguely knowing them as "the Spongebob band", play them the song "Baby Bitch", where the line: "Most beauty I've seen, you come from a dream, but I can't close my eyes anymore" is preceded by the line: "Fuck you, you stinkin' ass ho".

Surprised there hasn't been a Ween LP anywhere on the original list or user adds until now. Felt good to finally give this mythic band a listen (I'd only heard Ocean Man before), and for the most part I really enjoyed the distinctive character that made itself present in the well-executed instrumentals. I do think this LP lost a good deal of steam as it went along, front-loading its best ideas and getting a bit monotonous as things went on, but overall I appreciated the Ween crash course and enjoyed this album!

Ween is never not interesting! 3 stars.

Alternative rock, neo-psychedelia, experimental rock, comedy rock. Ni fu ni fa.

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: Take me away

Yummy

Are we really doing Ween? Fuck, alright. I know what to expect: 300 different genres, joke lyrics. I dunno what I hate more tbh: these dumbshit Ween albums, or the fact I always like them. Objectively, though, this album is at least 50% filler - like the rest of their stuff. 3/5.

This was fun and fine but nothing special.

Quite fun and a good laugh. Up beat and light hearted.

From the album cover I was expecting this to be some teen pop punk music from an American pie film. It was better than that.

Weird, mixed up genres, obscure lyrics. Had to turn off "Spinal Meningitis", too much for my weak ass. Not bad, but not really for me. Too much strangeness.

Oh shiet, Ween that isn’t The Mollusk or Quebec? (Aka the 100% of Ween music I’m familiar with) Let’s go Perhaps the lack of sleep I am operating on contributes to the rating, but I don’t think this is quite as good as those other Weens. (Then again, I didn’t really care for the Mollusk at first listen but I enjoy it a lot more now.) I concur that this band should be in the original list. After all, 69 Love Songs can’t be the only 90s postmodern genre-hopping experiment! “Take Me Away”, “A Tear For Eddie”, “Mister Would You Please Help My Pony?”, “Joppa Road” July 10, 2025

Love me some Ween

By all conceivable metrics out there, Ween should be filed next to These Might Be Giants and Phish in a folder labelled as "Weird genre-hopping acts with a cult following which did not necessarily yield essential masterpieces in the album format". Quite a long title for that imaginary dusty folder of mine, but if you can find a shorter one, be my guest. That said, my rating of *Chocolate and Cheese* will be slightly higher than the TMBG record suggested to me a couple of days ago, for reasons I will try to quickly explain now... Indeed, off-kilter highlights such as "I Can't Put My Finger On It" (anticipating the marine themes of *The Mollusk*), sarcastic break-up ballad "Baby Bitch", "Voodoo Lady" (splitting the difference between bayou blues recorded with an eighties synth pop flair and more abrasive noise dirges à la Sonic Youth), or the short pop gem "What Deaner Was Really Talking About" easily make up for the senseless drivel found elsewhere in the LP (more on that later), while still retaining the craziest aspects of the American band's music. Some deeper cuts can also be enjoyable, like the sixties psychedelic pop pastiche "Míster, Would you Please Help My Pony?", or that ambient instrumental homage to Funkadelic's Edie Hazel -- displaying impressive guitar-playing chops worthy of the artist Ween pays tribute to here. Said instrumental also helps underline the fact that the American act can manage to reach musical artistry that's truly inspiring from time to time, as ironic as it is on a more general level. In other words, there's more than meets the eye here. Of course, when Ween's music is bad, it's *really* bad. The opener on this album, some sort of rockabilly parody, epitomizes this lameness perfectly, and the professional production values actually make matters worse here. If that thing was lo-fi, just like in early Ween LPs, at least you'd get some sort of punk-rock-driven kick in the teeth. Whereas the actual result in the present track is just boring. Also, the offensive lyrics on a couple of cuts aged like milk. Provocative art is fine in my book generally speaking, but this stuff making fun of kids with an incurable disease, or repeating the words "AIDS" and "HIV" in a goofy tone of voice over polka-adjacent muzak, simply appear designed to make a couple of nineties college bros giggle in university dorms. Yeah, right, SO edgy. Yawn. Ween's surreal artistry is indeed often a double-edged sword on this LP. Pitchfork's Stuart Berman can praise the latter as foretelling absurdist internet aesthetics while still being in the "analog era", I'm pretty sure that *current* internet-driven college humour is actually more sophisticated than that on average. And also funnier, more importantly. Yeah sure, we now live in a digital era when the line between good taste and bad taste has been somehow abolished. But at the end of the day, even some of the most open-minded listeners out there will quickly recognize which songs are listenable and which ones are gratuitously grating in the tracklist of this 31-year-old LP. And this whether lyrically or musically. Looking at you, "Candi" and "The HIV Song". Still, a lot of other tracks surprisingly hold water in this bizarre record, as voluntarily messy as it is (it's all summed up in its title, right?). Credit the musicianship and the artistic flair here, probably. There is for instance more allure or more playfulness in Ween's vocal performances than what you can find in your usual These Might Be Giants LP -- whose own vocal performances often come off as amateurish in comparison (and the very wordy lyrics, as witty as they are, certainly don't help -- in that sense, Ween's surreal economy with words is far more interesting in the long run)... That said, *of course*, I WON'T include *Chocolate & Cheese* in my own list of "essential" LPs. Every alt-rock music fan worth their salt who is NOT part of the Ween cult knows their best album is *The Mollusk*, because it pulled off the incredible feat of being both wildly idiosyncratic and yet almost cohesive -- in spite of the expected changes in music styles. Plus, it harbours a popular gem such as "Ocean Man*, along with pretty cool prog-inspired cuts with specific Ween tongue-in-cheek twists in them. Waiting for someone in here to suggest this better album to include it in my "high-rated" gallery. Or possibly even in my *highest rated* one. Being a weirdo doesn't necessarily mean you can't be a little picky. 2.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, rounded up to 3. 7.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2.5). Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ----- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 33 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 42 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 81 (including this one) ---- Émile, quelques récentes réponses au dessus...

Ween is such an oddly unique band and I’m sure some people love the oddities and genre bouncing found in this album. To me there were some songs that they really excelled in, like the jazzier funky songs were great. But some of their songs are either really weird or they just aren’t as good in some genres. If they stuck to one genre per album I’d probably find one I’d like but instead it’s just songs here and there. 5.5/10