White Pepper. It took me a while to get it. It wasn't until I opened up Ween's latest album and saw the insert, with one side whitewashed and the other covered in multicolored peppers, that I began to dissect the album's name, and eventually came upon my epiphany. "White Pepper. White. Pepper. White Album! Sgt. Pepper! White Pepper! Shit!" Either I'm reading way too much into this album's title, or Gene and Dean have spliced together the names of two of the greatest albums ever into a spicy, yet seemingly benign title.
Right now, you are either seething with rage or chortling with glee. It all depends on whether or not you've actually heard this record. If you haven't heard the record, you probably fall into the former category. "What's that!" you say, "how dare a band compare itself to the greatest single rock and roll band ever! Gene and Dean are blasphemers! Death to them! Death I say!" Well, settle down. That was my initial reaction, too. But as I listened to the record more and more, I began to see just how clever this album's title is. For the record, this album does not sound like the Beatles, with the exception of maybe a few tracks. White Pepper's similarity to the Beatles lies not in its sound, but rather in its execution.
White Pepper bears a much stronger resemblance to the first half of its moniker than to the second. The White Album covered all points on the stylistic map. Play it through once, and you can find the origins of almost every major modern musical style in at least one track; even with all the stylistic curveballs, though, it still sounded like a Beatles record. White Pepper continues Ween's quest to prove that they can cover just about any style of music with impeccable wit and accuracy. Like the White Album, White Pepper lacks the cohesiveness of earlier works, but it also demonstrates how a band can undergo some serious genre-bending, while still retaining a sound that is uniquely theirs.
The first thing you'll probably notice about White Pepper is that, for the first time ever, Ween sounds like an entire band. While The Mollusk merely hinted at a bigger, fuller sound, White Pepper serves as the Do the Collapse to The Mollusk's Mag Earwhig!. Except good. But despite the new hi-fi sound, which is due in no small part to the presence of Gene's and Dean's touring band on the album, White Pepper is unquestionably Ween. Gene's unmistakable voice and impeccable sense of melody come off sounding even better than they did back in the days of 4-track recording. And Dean's guitar work is at its most versatile and enjoyable, ranging from jazz licks on "Pandy Fackler," a song about a retarded girl who "sucks dick under the promenade," to flamenco guitar on "Bananas and Blow."
White Pepper kicks off with "Exactly Where I'm At," a rocking, if overly repetitive song featuring some classic psychedelic Dean Ween soloing. "Exactly Where I'm At" is rivaled in its arena-rocking status only by "Back to Basom," a thoroughly fucked-up power ballad about smiling waste, and dancers with lost legs. Or at least I think that's what it's about. "Even if you Don't," one of the two tracks on White Pepper that sound remotely like the Beatles, is a charming McCartney-esque piano-driven tune. But Ween finds itself at its most Beatlesque on "Ice Castles," a wobbly Strawberry Fields-ish instrumental that was originally titled simply "Baroque Jam."
Unfortunately, White Pepper is a bit of a disappointment as compared to The Mollusk. First of all, a few tracks, like the hard rocking "Stroker Ace," just don't hold up with the rest of the album. And while many of the tracks are quite excellent, none of them approach the sheer brilliance of songs like "The Mollusk" or "Buckingham Green." Its lack of thematic consistency renders White Pepper incapable of making any vast statement such as The Mollusk did. And, let's face it, the lack of profanity, including the complete absence of the word "fuck," renders it incapable of being as funny as early Ween faves like "She Fucks Me," and the ever-popular "LMLYP." Still, White Pepper is hardly a step back for Gene and Dean. More like a lateral. Ween has taken on 70's prog, Prince, country, and now arena rock. And they've managed to do all of it well. So what does the future hold for Ween? Who knows. Maybe they'll take on techno. When "Everything is Beyond the Ultraworld" comes out, I'll buy it.
