Shinola 1

Ween | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 19, 2006)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Chocodog
• ASIN: B000ALMMJ6
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,311 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Ween have never been accused of taking themselves too seriously. Music, on the other hand, is serious business indeed for the New Hope, Pennsylvania duo. As their career stretches into its second decade, they have a rabidly devoted fan base, no more ties to a major label, and a body of work that marks the most significant contribution to psychedelic music of the last ten years. In part this is because they don't hew to a limited definition of "psychedelic," making music that is trippy without being hippy. Over nine albums they've explored a music store's worth of genres with accomplished song craft and instrumentation, which can include anything from a drum machine to Elvis Presley's backup singers. In Shinola Vol. 1, a collection of songs left off other albums, the "brownest" strains of Ween's oeuvre are on proud display. "Brown" is the code word Ween uses to describe music that's warbly, pitch-shifted, and plain strange. The stompy, squirty opener "Tastes Good on the Bun" falls into this camp, as does the astral travelogue "The Rift." Elsewhere Ween's gleeful, Saturday morning cartoon side surfaces in "Boys Club," begging the question of when exactly they'll join Danny Elfman and Mark Mothersbaugh in writing music for movies (their occasional gigs for Nickelodeon and their disastrous collaboration with Pizza Hut notwithstanding). Their reverence of Prince is felt in "Monique the Freak," which contains what have to be the dumbest lyrics in the Ween canon. And "Gabrielle" could make it past even the most vigilant customs agent as a rare Thin Lizzy track. For a collection of odds-and-sods, Shinola Vol. 1 stands up remarkably well with other albums like The Mollusk and Quebec. Bring on Vol. 2. Hail Boognish. --Ryan Boudinot

Ween's Brownest Albums

Quebec	Chocolate and Cheese	The Mollusk
Pure Guava	Godweensatan - The Oneness	The Pod

Product Description

Shinola Vol. 1 is a collection of songs that were left off other albums, the "brownest" strains of Ween's oeuvre are on proud display. Brown is the code word Ween uses to describe music that's warbly, pitch-shifted, and plain strange. The stompy, squirty opener 'Tastes Good On The Bun' falls into this camp, as does the astral travelogue 'The Rift'. Elsewhere Ween's gleeful, Saturday morning cartoon side surfaces in 'Boys Club', begging the question of when exactly they'll join Danny Elfman and Mark Mothersbaugh in writing music for movies. Their reverence of Prince is felt in 'Monique The Freak', which contains what have to be the dumbest lyrics in the Ween canon. 'Gabriell' could make it past even the most vigilant customs agent as a rare Thin Lizzy track. For a collection of odds-and-sods, Shinola Vol. 1 stands up remarkably well with other albums like The Mollusk and Quebec. Schnick-Schnack. 2006. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tastes good., August 14, 2005

By 

Mike K. (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shinola 1 (Audio CD)

This may be an outtakes compilation, but it's definitely a must-hear for Ween fans even if they're ones who aren't quite fanatical enough to have picked up all the live Chocodog releases. Despite the product description, none of the tracks have been previously released officially (a few have been bootlegged, but in different versions), and almost all of them are quality enough to have made the albums. Actually there's no information in the liner notes about when each track was recorded, although occasionally just by the "feel" of a song you can make a guess (the Pink Floyd-inspired "Did You See Me" was most likely left-over from The Mollusk or Quebec, and the unabashed soft rock of "Someday" smacks of White Pepper, while the tinny drum machines on "Big Fat F***" and "Tastes Good On The Bun" indicate they were probably from earlier on). Anyway, while it's obvious that these tracks span all over the band's career, this compilation flows almost about as well as the average Ween album, due to a combination of savy track listing and how eclectic the band generally is anyway. There are all kinds of should-have-been classics here, my favorites being the dead-on Thin Lizzy homage "Gabrielle", the raunchy sex-funk of "Monique The Freak" (which will appeal to anyone who loved "LMLYP"), and the previously mentioned soft-rock closer "Someday" (come on, how can you beat a slickly produced Wings-style prom theme ballad that happens to inexplicably include the verse "sunday... monday... tuesday... is pizza day... pizza day"?). If you haven't gotten this already, grab it before it's out of print. Again, don't let the outtakes thing dissuade you, on the whole this release is at least as strong as their last few albums.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sound of brown abounds, October 7, 2005

By 

J.Rouatt (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shinola 1 (Audio CD)

I should preface this review by stating that I am a HUGE Ween fan so you can take this review for what its worth.

Since I discovered the Brothers Boognish I became an immediate disciple and began to try and track down every song or snippet of noise that they put to tape. 40 or 50 bootlegs later I gave up trying to document their entire live catalogue but I figured I'd still be able to find all of their B-Sides and rarities on my own and I have several compilation CDs of rough quality tracks to show for my efforts.

When I heard Ween was to release an official compilation of rarities I was as giddy a school girl, as any new release from the Brothers is a welcome event. However, I was a bit pissed off that `lesser fans' would, in the time it took them to purchase a copy of `Shinola', be able to hear songs that took me months to track down. I was also a bit reluctant to purchase a collection of songs I already had in one form or another.

Well, all of my worries were for naught. First, this disc includes tracks even I hadn't already heard, such as the hilarious Jewish jazz funk rant `Israel' and the delicious slow burner "I Fell in Love Today". And the songs that I already had have been re-mastered and sound as crisp as any of Ween's newer releases and put my old mp3s to shame. As such it can stand up against any of their albums, evening outshining 1 or 2 of them. The closest point of reference in my mind would be `Chocolate & Cheese', an album which heralded a cleaner production in their sound with more fully realized songs but which lacked none of the weirdness which made their earlier material so endearing. Like C&C, `Shinola' is all over the map style wise, but there's never any doubt to whose record this is. `Brown' is what we've come to expect from Ween and with Shinola we get a big steaming pile of Poop.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but no classic, March 3, 2007

By 

Punch - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shinola 1 (Audio CD)

I'll rock out to any Ween all day long, but if the point of these reviews is to help uninformed listeners decide whether to purchase an album or not, then here's the deal: This is a fun album, and if you like Ween you'll dig this, but there's a reason some of these cuts weren't included on albums. There's no doubt some of these tunes should have been previously released. But it's a little absurd for all these people to give this album the coveted "5" stars. If this a 5 star album, what is the Mollusk or Chocolate and Cheese, 'cause this album ain't either of those.
Reviewing music is silly anyway, 'cause one man's trash is another man's all-time favorite album, but I don't think potential listeners should be viewing this as a 5 star album.