Ween - White Pepper (2000)
28-09-2024
- Exactly Where I'm At
Bright stars, tall flame on a warm summer night. The most 90s alternative sounding track and a great energetic opener.
- Flutes of Chi
Psychedelic folk tune stolen from George Harrison. Some of the best Ween lyrics are on this song, with abstract musings on the cycle of life and death. The guitar solos are reserved and mature and very fitting.
- Even If You Don't
The music video for this song was directed by Matt Stone and Trey Parker (The South Park guys) and it rules. Gene and Ween get cucked hard for comedic purposes. Very musically reminiscent of The Beatles' "Getting Better" off Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Lyrics about an unrequited love, an abusive partner dismissive of anothers' feelings.
- Bananas and Blow
Tropical jam about licking cocaine off the mirror while held hostage. Infinitely catchy chorus.
- Stroker Ace
Speed rock Motorhead rip off. They would do another in this style a few years later in "It's Gonna Be a Long Night" (Quebec, 2003) to much greater results. Still chugs pretty hard, quite the toe tapper.
- Ice Castles
Pretty aptly titled track that describes a very specific soundscape. Some weird oddity track interlude you would find on a Beatles album in the late 60s.
- Back to Basom
Warm twang slide guitar hovers over a gentle acoustic ballad. That slide guitar is really boss shit for real, it makes all the fluids in my body move with the slides and I feel it in my soul.
- The Grobe
The heaviest track on here. Real stoner sludge metal anthem of White Pepper and it slams hard. The guitar tone is crunchy and atomizes molecules, but then the solo tour is white hot and sears retinas with sound.
- Pandy Fackler
70s yacht Steely Dan boating tchune. Real zany lyrics
- Stay Forever
Some of the sweetest lyrics for a lover are present on this track. The swelling strings and acoustic guitar produce a sense of intimicy, the vocal oohs and slide guitar strike a sense of longing and distance.
- Falling Out
Sounds like it was stolen from The Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965) album. Real straight to the point, efficient song about relationship turmoil. Has a Country rock flavor with the slide guitar and overall lawless moody feel of the track.
- She's Your Baby
Delicate, poetic love ballad. Brings closure to the previous two tracks being about holding to a lover forever, a breakup, and reconciliation, also a fantastic finale to a phenomenal album.
Ween's final album with Electra makes full use of the production budget by putting to wax one of the most eclectic and sonically rich records in their discography. White Pepper is mature, ripe even. Ween goes man mode without forgetting their kid roots and it results in one of their most accomplished Rock albums.
The sonic richness of White Pepper is due in large part to already having a professional Country album, 12 Golden Country Greats (1996) and The Mollusk (1997) under their belt, and still being signed to Electra for a final album meant they could pull all the stops and have a real pro sounding record. There's an urban legend that the name White Pepper was proposed by a producer that thought their sound was similar to the Beatles' Sgt Pepper and White Albums combined, indicating a certain maturity and evolution compared to prior works. White Pepper definitely has the musical variety anchored to Rock and Roll that the White Album has, and many of the songs bear a striking ressemblence to the writing styles of the Beatles (Flutes of Chi being a Harrison track with its psychedelic sitar and Eastern ramblings, Even if You Don't being a McCartney track with its similarity to Getting Better and overall Wings-esque production and progression). I think the Beatles connection is merited, Ween scratches a lot of the same itch as The Beatles without being a total overlap. Ween always ooze a certain vibe on their albums, a visceral authenticity and the stones to go out and produce an album that captures a snapshot in time of the creators and their lives. I guess Ween-heads already have a term for that: 'brown'. A song being brown is being rough around the edges but so genuine you can't help but love it. A lot of Ween's earlier stuff can be classified as sonically brown, with rougher production, a propensity for stanky bloozerawk riffing and more Randum XD humour. White Pepper is a lot more evolved in that sense, but you never get the impression that these guys sold their soul to make a professional record. The randomness, eclectic musical stylings and genuineness is still there, under glossy production.
I used to question the move to more professional production in the Electra series of albums, but it makes sense to me now given my dive into Ween's earliest material and realizing they always wanted to achieve a grander sound than their lofi days, even if those were baller-ass. White Pepper is definitely in my Top 3 Ween albums alongside The Mollusk (1997) and Quebec (2003), and I can rotate those any given way on any given day.