Ween wrote the great songs that other bands wouldn't (other bands were hindered by factors like "good taste," "common sense" and "artistic restraint," none of which Ween cared a pittance about). Whatever objections can be raised about the band, there's no escaping the fact that I freely enjoy an absurd number of their songs and a good number of their albums, and the bizarre eclecticism of their discography (and in individual albums when they so desire) scratches enough itches for me to rate them very highly. Of bands whose peaks were in the 90s, Ween would definitely have to be near the top of the pile for me.
Of course, I can see where having that opinion could seem utterly atrocious and even offensive. For a second (I'll get back to it), let's put aside the main argument against the band, which basically comes down to two words: "NOVELTY ACT." The most legitimate objection I can see towards putting Ween on a pedestal in relation to other 90s bands is that Ween basically ignored the 90s. Ween's contributions to the development of 90s rock are negligible if we want to be generous, and aside from a couple of songs here and there that kinda sorta incorporated some influences from what was going on around them, they didn't really let 90s music contribute to them. If you're somebody who genuinely enjoys 90s rock music (and also all of the other genres that really started to take off in that decade), and who's intimately familiar with and invested in the major developments and the major groups of the decade, the idea of a band like Ween being treated as anything more than a stupid joke must be really irksome. Well, as I've said many times before, my lack of interest in 90s rock kept me away from rock music until '95 and almost exclusively bound to classic rock and prog rock until the early 00s, so there's no great overarching love for 90s rock to act as a hindrance for me to get into this band. Perhaps I'm a fool, but we all have our biases.
But still ... Ween are a joke band, right? After all, they often sing their songs with silly voices, and they often fill their songs with utterly ridiculous, often humorous lyrics, and a large part of their diversity comes from wanting to make fun of the genres they're dabbling in, and they don't really seem to take anything they're doing seriously. Given all of this, why should they be taken seriously by anybody?
The main thing I'd say in response is that the "humor" aspects of Ween are rather exaggerated and misrepresented by their detractors. One of the most important things to understand about Gene Ween (Aaron Freeman, the band's lead vocalist and a solid support guitarist) and Dean Ween (Mickey Melchiondo, the band's occasional vocalist and an awesome guitarist) is that they had a genuine love for all of the kinds of music they dabbled in. With this love, however, came a strong recognition of the silliness of some aspects of these various genres, or (even better) a strong recognition of the potential silliness of some aspects of these genres, if only the proportions of the aspects were exaggerated. Ween's role as commentators of the musically grotesque has long struck me as a sort of cross between similar roles played years earlier by Todd Rundgren and Frank Zappa, and given that I enjoy both of those artists when they've been in that mode, it shouldn't be too surprising that I like Ween's efforts in this regard. Of course, all of this commentary wouldn't really be worth much if the band didn't have such a strong talent for writing legitimately interesting songs in the genres they'd simultaneously be tweaking, and I insist that they showed this talent regularly. The genre hopping on Ween albums always strikes me as Ween deciding to record a song in some genre just because they think it would be a lot of fun, and then proceeding to make something great.
While Ween certainly spent some efforts in genre parody, though, it would be a mistake to pigeonhole Ween as "that band that does humorous genre parody." Disregarding all of the songs the band wrote that don't seem to have any overt humor at all, there are also a lot of songs where it's nearly impossible to figure out what genre they're working in. Yes, the band spent a lot of time early on dabbling in hardcore punk, and did a whole album of country, and did an elaborate homage to 70s prog rock, but while those may be what the band is best known for (and in many cases some of their best loved work) they shouldn't completely overshadow all of the songs where the only possible identity is "A Ween song."
Ah, but putting aside the genre parody aspects, there's still the issue of the band's consistent reliance on humor, which is enough in the minds of many to relegate the band to the same bin as, say, Weird Al Yankovic. There is of course truth in this (in the use of humor, not in putting them in the Weird Al bin, as their approach was totally different from his), at least if one, again, disregards all of the songs that don't have any overt humor at all. Ween's main approach to humor lay in the "incongruity" model; aside from the aforementioned gross exaggerations of genre aspects, and a tendency to stick completely ridiculous lyrics in spots where they wouldn't normally be expected, Ween had a gift with using profanity that few others would even attempt to match (I feel like Ween, more than any other band I can think of, used profanity as a weapon). When the tone of a song didn't seem like it would merit profanity, they loved to drop in just a smidge, and when the tone of a song seemed like it could merit some, they would often saturate the song with more than it could reasonably bear (and in some cases, when it seemed like some would be reasonable, they would completely avoid it). They had a similar gift with the crass and the tasteless; to paraphrase an old friend, "Ween wrote songs about misogyny, spinal meningitis and the AIDS virus, but they wrote great songs about misogyny, spinal meningitis and the AIDS virus." They also had some occasional bouts of surprising sophistication in their humor, though; there's something to be said about making a Philly Soul song about Philadelphia, for instance.
So yes, Ween used humor, but so what? Why does rock music, and by extension so many of its fans, have such a strange aversion to anything that's not earnest and serious? The use of humor in creating music goes back centuries; there are scores of well-known instances of humor in classical music, all based in acknowledging listener expectations and then doing something that mocks those expectations or at least presents a strong twist upon what is expected. Lest you think that all such instances of musical humor are sophisticated and don't belong in a conversation about Ween's use of the ridiculous and absurd, consider this: the 4th movement of Beethoven's 2nd symphony was generally understood, upon its release, as a thinly veiled joke about Beethoven's problems with his gastro-intestinal tract. That's right: it's basically a fart joke.
But enough about Ween and humor; even though I have little problem with the band's use of it, I'm still falling into the common trap of dwelling upon it more than is really necessary. Ween's career is interesting to me for reasons that go far beyond humor, and these deserve some mention (they'll also tend to get mentioned in the actual album reviews). Their career has a fascinating narrative associated with it, whether because of the multiple releases (supposedly not very good, mind you) prior to their "debut," or their strange early fascination with a fictional God of their own making (Boognish), or the way they inexplicably got signed to a major label after their first two albums, or the way they made their first major label release less sonically pleasing than their first two, or the way they cut off their evolutionary arc by doing country and prog-rock albums, or a bunch of other things (these details all get mentioned pretty frequently, but they're so interesting that they're impossible to ignore). Another thing that pleases me greatly about the band (it doesn't actually affect their band rating, but it's a tasty detail all the same) is that, for anybody not allergic to stretched-out guitar jams, they were a phenomenal live band; they were a band that could seemingly play anything from their discography at the drop of a hat, and quite often whatever they'd play would get reinvented into epic loud guitar rock even if the original sounded totally different. This also led to tremendously varied live shows; by the end, they could very easily play a show one night where they'd play a total of two tracks from the first three albums, and immediately follow the next night with six songs from The Pod and an acoustic set just because they felt like having one. I saw them twice, in 2003 and 2007, and the two shows had incredibly different 2-hour setlists but were equally enjoyable (and apparently the setlists on the shows immediately preceeding and following those shows were very different themselves).
(I should point out as an admission of potential bias that the 2007 show was the date with my then-future wife that convinced her that I was actually secretly a fun-loving guy that was worth getting to know better after all, whereas previously she thought I was a little too serious. Of course, there were the occasional moments of terror, particularly when they started performing "Touch my Tooter" and "My Own Bare Hands," but we managed our way through).
When all is said and done, though, Ween is ultimately a cult band, and while the band might have wanted more popularity than it had (the best it could do was reach the top 100 in album sales, once), it wasn't really fit for a general audience. A Ween fan who reads this page will either agree with me or, possibly, think I should rate the band even higher; somebody who doesn't like Ween will think I'm daft, and at best there might be a few who don't know the band well who decide to buy some of their albums. Well, all I can do is recommend that more people buy their albums. Maybe rock music would have gotten by just fine if the band and its products never existed (if you want bands to innovate or at least try to make some significant impact on culture at large, you should probably stay way), but my collection would be sadder and a lot less fun if I didn't know about them.
Sean O'Neil (sean.cfoxtrot.oneil.gmail.com) (05/13/16)
I read several artists' reviews at your site before getting to the one for Ween. My favorite Ween album is Quebec, but Chocolate & Cheese is pretty close. Anyway, I had something for your notes. On Quebec, the cut "Captain" is very likely a hazy reminiscence of Mickey with a client out on the boat, the client's seasick but maybe a couple others are having a decent fishing day and so Mickey has to stay out. It might be grey skies, which make seasickness way worse. Mickey's day job isn't playing guitar. Google him and see his fishing charter Captain web page.
One of the things you could say about Transdermal Celebration is that its fake-profound lyrical phrases are satire or parody of some of prog rock's more pompous lyrical tendencies. Ween parodied lots of themes and that's what I'd guess they were doing here. The Ween genius is making the song sound so tight as to not be comic, lampooning, etc.
Overall on Ween, I think their familiarity with satire and parody makes them uneasy "favorites" for people who are maybe a wee bit pretentious and perhaps pretentious in the ways that Ween tend to satirize. Over the course of my life I've met many pretentious people who spout nonsense about essential albums or irreplaceable musicians, and in the end many who talk or write about music remind me of the people that Jack Green took apart here.
Since music geekdom is an outsider culture thing, and a lot of outsiders tend to get that hypocritical non-conforming conformist outlook going, and a lot of such people are drawn toward what in 2016 would be called "Social Justice Warrior" stances, it would stand to reason that Ween couldn't become critical favorites or even broad-based music geek favorites because they don't have any sacred cows, while critics and music geeks do -- and don't like to see them skewered with parody jape or satire by people as talented as Melchiondo and Freeman.
Best song: Pretty much everything
The best way I can think to describe this album on the whole is as a celebration of music, with all praise given to the great benevolent Boognish. It may well be that Gene and Dean like to use punk and hard rock (often bordering on heavy metal, like in "Wayne's Pet Youngin'") as a fallback, but the band touches on all sorts of other styles as well (few of them contemporary; this is definitely an album based in stylistic nostalgia), all the while giving the kinds of affectionate tweaks that would characterize their whole career. If there's a ding to put on the album (aside from the really tedious "Blackjack," a less enjoyable and much longer version of the kind of lo-fi bass-heavy thumping of the weirdly menacing "I'm in the Mood to Move"), it's that the band is producing a colorful collage of ideas more than it's producing a lot of solid songs, but the ideas are so interesting individually and in aggregate that I don't really mind the short and spastic nature of a lot of the songs.
It would be difficult to think of a better opening to Ween's first real album than "You Fucked Up," of course. For better or worse, no matter how one feels about the song (magnificent, silly, magnificently silly, whatever) or the genre, I think it would be difficult to argue against the notion that "You Fucked Up" absolutely nails the essence of hardcore punk, only with that essence getting an injection of HGH. They nail the essence of a lot of other genres just as well, though. The first half of "Up on the Hill" is always rightly noted as a great parody of gospel music, but have you ever noticed that the metallic guitars in the second half sound an awful lot in style like they're played on a metallic banjo, or that the vocals sound like they're from a parody of an old coal miner? Some other top-notch examples of simultaneously nailing and mutating the genres theyre hitting are "I Gots a Weasel" (be-bop jazz), "Never Squeal" (the kind of upright-bass-y jazz one hears behind Beatniks), "Squelch the Weasel" (pretentious 70s art-rock-ish acoustic balladry in imitation of old-time folk), "Marble Tulip Juicy Tree" (60s psychedelic rock), and of course, the glorious "L.M.L.Y.P" (the greatest Prince imitation that could ever exist). I guess the last one is a little bit of a cheat because it's partially a cover medley (containing elements from "Shockadelica" and "Alphabet St."), but they successfully pick out material from Prince's catalogue to that point that was both enjoyable and completely ridiculous, and they weave this into a track that sounds, even in the original spots, completely indistinguishable from Prince himself.
There are lots of details in other tracks (and the album as a whole) I enjoy for reasons beyond successful imitation, though. I love the way the band successfully recognizes early on that "Weasel" is a funny word and that songs that mention weasels are automatically 20% funnier than they'd be without mentioning weasels. I love the way the violent guitar noises in the breaks of "Tick" have a sort of swirling feel that mimics the tumult described as the tick spirals around the drain in the toilet. I love the way the weird backing vocal cuts in with the frantic "ERNEST HEMINGWAY IS DEAD!!" during the great verse of "Ernest Hemingway would always be there for me/but now Ernest Hemingway is dead." I love the way "Nicole" starts off as a fairly conventional doo-wop parody and then turns into something completely bonkers and yet strangely rhythmic. I love the way "Wayne's Pet Youngin'" absolutely tears my hair out. I love how "El Camino" initiates the band's realization that two white guys from Pennsylvania singing in a mock-Spanish manner is inexplicably funny. I love how "Birthday Boy," for all of the attention its opening and closing samples of "Echoes" get, is this incredible burst of slightly ambiguous emotional pain.
I could keep going but that would inevitably lead to namechecking everything, so I won't (a special mention definitely needs to be given to "Hippy Smell," on the reissue, if only for the great moment of, "Well you know I got somethin' to tell ya, you wouldn't wanna be alive in the 60s/and you would've probably gotten your little hippy ass killed or something/You little shit-face"). I could never agree with somebody who called this the band's best (again, a little less hardcore punk and a little less in the way of fragmented oddity would have helped), but this is probably the band's greatest statement of purpose, and it deserves serious props if only for that. If your Ween collection doesn't go earlier than Chocolate and Cheese and you want to venture into earlier Ween, get this next.
Best song: Captain Fantasy
Of course, it takes patience and an iron constitution to hold up well enough to come to that conclusion. I'd be hardpressed to think of a more difficult stretch to sit through on a Ween album than the eight track stretch starting with "Demon Sweat" and ending with "Mononucleosis." This isn't the same as me calling this stretch bad, mind you; I'm a big fan of "Demon Sweat" (starting as gentle moody guitar and keyboard balladry before the guitars and keyboards get stranger), "Can U Taste the Waste" (an incredibly heavy lo-fi guitar playing an incredible riff over cheap percussion while an echoey whisper sings "Can u taste the waste" over the course of a minute and a half), "Don't Sweat It" (featuring some incredibly monstrous and atmospheric distortion giving support to a surprisingly decent vocal melody) and "Mononucleosis" (which makes the disease sound like some sort of awful out-of-body experience). But "Molly" nearly grinds to a halt every time they start saying the title repeatedly, "Awesome Sound" is a ridiculous throwaway, "Laura" goes way too long for a track at that pace and with that vocal effect, and "Boing" makes no impression at all, and when all of these tracks (good and bad) are strung in a row it makes for an incredibly unpleasant listening experience (even though, again, most of this material is quite fine). Yup, if there's a reason that The Pod is better suited for listening to in snippets or in single tracks when your iPod is on shuffle, it would be these songs.
The idea that something is wrong with this album and with the 'brothers' starts from the very beginning, though. Where "You Fucked Up" put the group in full flight almost right away, the opening "Strap on That Jammy Pac" is an attempted "rousing" opening that quite literally doesn't go anywhere; the introduction ends up getting played twice, and then the song just gives up. "Dr. Rock" is a great up-tempo, heavy rocker, and yet the combination of Gene's distorted vocals, the effects on the guitars and the cheapness of the drums make the song much less rousing than, say, "Wayne's Pet Youngin'."
The next song, "Frank," is another bizarre dose of slimy darkness (starting off as a sluggish rhythmic number with really deep vocals before guitars go nuts), but it also introduces something resembling a thematic link, courtesy of the phrase "pork roll egg and cheese" (later making appearances near the end in the even more sluggish "She F***s Me" and the lightweight "Pork Roll Egg and Cheese"). Yup, if this track introduces the phrase in a gross, heavy context ("...with some gravy fries"), and "She F***s Me" (which isn't very enjoyable) has it as a sluggish repeated phrase spoken by more deep vocals, then the final appearance in "Pork Roll ..." is the light at the end of the tunnel ("..on a kaiser bun"), done as a lightweight pop song with high-pitched vocals (which practically sound angelic by this point in the album).
Of course, the other thematic link (extending onto Pure Guava and further into non-album rarities) comes from "The Stallion," done in parts 1 and 2 on this album. There's an incredible nightmarish surreality in these two tracks, matching the dank and gloom of the album cover even better than anything else here, but amidst all of the gloomy sounds are a couple of great ridiculous moments like "On my dick you shall sit" and "A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T A L L I O N," and I'll admit that they're so stupid that I laugh every time.
I also tend to laugh at the skit track (over some soft bits of Ween-ish muzak) "Pollo Asado," even if there's nothing that immediately jumps out as obviously funny. It's a track that requires close listening; the joke, best as I can tell, is that both the person buying food and the person selling food are completely stoned, and it has an amusing effect on their actions and speech. Maybe I'm an idiot for laughing at it, but I can't help myself.
I'm definitely not an idiot for loving the two tracks that follow it, though. "Right to the Ways and the Rules of the World" is another great prog rock imitation (in retrospect, The Mollusk wasn't such a big surprise after all), with a solemn mellotron-like keyboard underpinning a tune that features Gene going out of his gourd to produce a vibe of desperation. Even better, though, is "Captain Fantasy," where the processed guitars and ecstatic vocals combine into one of the best odes I can imagine to, well, the power of fantasy. Yup, early Ween doesn't get much better than when Gene goes up into the upper register with "And when I'm here, I'm there / and when you're near, I'm here / the only words of your life, Captain Fantasy." Plus I crack up at the acoustic intro and outro that have nothing to do with the rest.
The rest has its ups ("Sketches of Winkle" is a fantastic metallic rocker that would have fit in well on the debut, "Sorry Charlie" is a great countryish ode of emotional ambiguity, and "Oh My Dear" is a badly needed light pop song amongst the darkness, a respite until "Pork Roll Egg and Cheese") and downs (I'm not a big fan of either "Alone" or "Moving Away), but it all feels strangely necessary for the whole. Overall, then, The Pod is definitely not an easy nut to crack, and often it doesn't seem like it's even worth trying to crack, but it's nearly as essential as GWS, and it's definitely necessary to get a full accurate sense of early Ween. If you like emotional ambiguity and messy guitar sounds, this might even end up one of your favorites.
Best song: Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)
And yet, as baffling as I find so much of the material, I still find myself intrigued by a good amount of the material, even when it's the kind of intrigue that still, after many listens, leaves me peering into the distance with a confused look while I repeatedly blink my eyes. These aren't songs that a normal, rational group would create, but that doesn't necessarily prevent a sort of perverse enjoyment. The big obvious classic, of course, is "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)" (it should be noted that the album shows the band taking on some Prince conventions in naming its songs, though I suppose that if they'd been totally authentic they would have used "Eye" in place of "I" when appropriate), where the band once again revels in its secret fondness of prog by creating an intricate, epic guitar pattern in the verses and a stomping chorus with thick harmonies singing total nonsense (and don't forget the fun that comes when the instrumentation disappears at the end but the vocals remain as is). While "Don't Get 2 Close" is an obvious highlight pick, though, the album has quite a few other songs that, if they're not classics, possibly could have seemed more so in another context (if not with better production, then in a context where not everything else also had that same production). For instance, the opening "Little Birdy," as awful as it sounds at first, does have a surprisingly catchy and involving vocal melody, with some interesting (though, again, processed as hell) guitar parts underneath. "The Stallion Pt. 3," while not sounding a bit like its predecessors, is nonetheless a worthy continuation of the "Stallion" tradition, full of interesting guitar texture (and strangely intriguing guitar passages in the last minute) and with an atmosphere that's actually downright pleasant.
While the album also has a few other relatively normal songs ("Push Th' Little Daisies" was a minor hit single for reasons I can't fathom, but it's ok enough; "Sarah" is a really nice downbeat pop ballad, and "I Saw Gener Cryin' in His Sleep" is fun country-ish rock only made weird by the off-key chorus), the quintessential Pure Guava tracks are built around bizarre ideas that only Ween could have thought were good enough to consider fleshing out. I must say, I quite enjoy the rhythmic "The Goin' Gets Tough From the Getgo," the subdued "I Play it Off Legit" (which is basically dialogue over an awfully static background), the frantic "Pumpin' 4 the Man" (kind of a poor man's "Wind Up Working at a Gas Station," but there are much worse things), and the strangely appealing combination of helium vocals, clever drum machine programming and tasty guitar passages that makes up "Springtheme." I'm less thrilled by the ultra-offensive "Reggaejunkiejew" (interesting as the rhythms are) or the offensive and simplistic (yet posessing its own power) "Flies On My Dick," but they're ok enough, I suppose. There's something good to be said for the blaring noise of "Mourning Glory" and the silly groove of the closing "Poop Ship Destroyer" too, even if I'm conscious the whole time that they're completely ridiculous.
The album has other tracks, some good (I'm kinda intrigued by the ballads-in-embryo of "Tender Situation" and "Loving U Thru it All") and some not really good, but they don't really do much to affect my attitude towards the album for better or worse. If I had to say, then, whether I liked the album or didn't, I'd definitely end up saying "yes" ... but ... I'd have to take a second to think about all of the individual tracks that I basically like. Taken in aggregate, I can easily see where this is an album even a hardcore Ween fan could despise. If you think you're a Ween fan, you should probably get this, but definitely get it after all of their other studio albums.
Best song: Maybe A Tear For Eddie. Maybe Voodoo Lady. Maybe What Deaner Was Talkin' About. Maybe something else.
And why shouldn't it? This is an eccentric pop/rock album full of catchy melodies and riffs, full of great guitar parts, full of shifts in mood and style. Why should I rate this any lower than, say, London Calling? Maybe the statements here are less mature and meaningful than the statements there, but it's not like my love of LC was based in an attachment to its politics (instead it's entirely based in the great melodies and riffs and clever style changes), so that doesn't really strike me as a detriment. Lots of people tend to rate The Mollusk higher, and I guess that one (in addition to having its own great collection of songs) makes better use of cool keyboard sounds and lush production, but I find myself losing focus in the middle of that one in a way that I don't on this album (well, except during "Candi"). And besides, just look at this track listing!! The album is full of live standards and (as far as I'm aware) fan favorites, more so than on any other Ween album (yes, I would argue even more than The Mollusk), and I can't just ignore that when picking one Ween album over the others.
I just like these songs so much. "Take Me Away" is a perfect opener, absolutely nailing Tom Jones-ish Vegas-y blues rock, and the production is so strong compared to before that it can't help but make every detail (especially in the guitars) totally intoxicating. The two "disease" songs are an utter delight, and yet nothing like each other; "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" is a creepy-as-hell atmospheric rocker with a ridiculous "child" voice and menacing guitar parts, and "The HIV Song" is an offensively cheerful instrumental (with high ringing guitar parts) except in the parts where they interject with either "AIDS" or "HIV" in the most bored voices possible (done live, they'd shout the words with joy, to equally great effect). "Freedom of '76" is a Philly Soul song about Philadelphia, with Gene taking on a delightful falsetto and nailing the vibe of 70s soul in the same way they'd been nailing punk and, uh, beebop jazz just a few years earlier.
Shucks, it's impossible for this not to turn into a review that covers every track, so I may as well surrender. The songs written around acoustic guitar are amazing, especially "Baby Bitch," which grabs hold of the vibe of Blood on the Tracks Dylan (Dean once essentially said the song was basically a rewrite of "Idiot Wind") and creates a low-key acoustic pop song with one of the most disarming uses of profanity in the whole Ween catalogue (and that says something). "Drifter in the Dark" (which goes for a generic country vibe and makes effective use of some ridiculous low-pitched barber-shop-ish backing vocals) and the closing "Don't Shit Where You Eat" (which has much the same "music out on the prairie" feel, only with lyrics in line with the title) are both very memorable and well-placed, and "Buenas Tardes Amigo," a parody of Mexican 'heroic' epics, lives up to its seven minutes far better than it probably should. Yes, it's overlong, but the (very silly) lyrics always draw me in, and details like the eventual use of a "dramatic" synth tone and the explosion at the end always crack me up plenty. Plus, as a bridge between "Candi" and "The HIV Song," it makes the overall listening experience even more bizarre.
The "poppy" songs are terrific, too. "Roses are Free" is their best "helium vocals" upbeat pop song yet (helped immensely by the strong production), with lyrics that are transparently ridiculous but totally engaging, and with a great vocal melody that's mimicked by a guitar solo in a way that brings something close to pop song catharsis. "Joppa Road" is lightweight but pleasant, with some nice bits of upbeat acoustic picking in the second half, and "What Deaner Was Talkin' About" (a call-back to "I Saw Gener Cryin' in His Sleep") is a nearly perfect pop song that gets stuck in my head all the time (especially when it gets to "The sun comes up and I'm all washed out ...").
The other four songs don't quite fit a standard category, but they're all great all the same. "I Can't Put My Finger On It" is Ween at its genre-smooshing weirdest; is it pop or is it punk, or is it prog or is it funk? I ... yeah. And why are there are sea-gulls over the quiet guitar breaks in the chorus? "A Tear for Eddie" is, of course, the band's tribute to Parliament guitarist Eddie Hazel, who died around the time they would have started thinking about recording this album. This guitar instrumental can't quite live up to the multi-part glory of "Maggot Brain," of course, but this does do a great job of capturing the beauty of the quieter parts of that classic, and the transitions from subdued to a little noisier back to subdued are plenty hypnotic for my taste. "Mister Would You Please Help My Pony" is probably stupid by any reasonable measure, but I always find myself pulled in by the vocal melody and the quiet guitar breaks, and try as I might I can't help but chuckle a bit at the silly line, "He can't talk because he's a pony." And finally, "Voodoo Lady" would be fun if it only contained the great rhythmic "main" song, with its great drum parts and the funky as hell guitar parts, but when the song builds into that noisy mid-section, it becomes sheer bliss for me.
I suppose that, on a certain level, the shift from writing somewhat avantgarde material to writing somewhat normal material could be considered a regression of sorts, but I'm glad that Ween went this route. I also suppose that some might consider this album to have too much diversity, as opposed to the common atmospheric hell of The Pod or the common stylistic ground of much of The Mollusk (or, for that matter, 12 Golden Country Greats), but that's certainly not a position I would endorse. If you have anywhere near the same lean towards messy pop albums that I do, and you haven't decided you hate Ween, then this album is a must-own. If you haven't heard any Ween, start here.
Fernie Canto (cfern.canto.gmail.com) (09/13/12)
My listening experience with Ween has been an extremely ambiguous and difficult one, for some reason, and I think I must attribute it mainly to two albums: GodWeenSatan and this one. The former, because of its massive scope and absurd variety, made it seem like the band was deliberately showing off and trying to SOUND fun instead of BEING fun, and this album, instead of seeming, is very, very painfully obvious. I frankly find this album unenjoyable, and is by far the most frustrating Ween experience. In fact, I could only get over that nasty feeling and like this band once I gave a few serious listens to The Mollusk, which in my opinion is the very first album in which the band put their souls into. The Mollusk sounds like a honest work of passion for music, while this one is trying too hard to show talents that really don't impress me. Firstly, they tackle a series of pretty diverse genres that they grew up with, and make it sound simulateneously legitimate and humourous. So what? Isn't that the very definition of parody? It's pretty sad when one is completely amazed by the MOST BASIC values of any comedy form. It's even worse when you consider that more than half of that "authenticity" is pure and simple studio work done by professionals -- that "sound" of Freedom of '76, for example. Secondly, many of these parodies are horribly amateurish. Voodoo Lady, for example, goes far beyond the point of being deliberately cheesy into the point of being awfully inept. Guys? Please? Playing around with the "latin" preset rhythms on the drum track may be fun for a while, but putting that on record is stupid. Not "comically stupid", but "too stupid to be comic".
Basically every "parody" track here reeks of that show-offy feel. Yeah, they can do barbershop quartet on Drifter in the Dark. So what? Oh, they can do "adult contemporary" on Joppa Road. Big deal. Being obvious and pedestrian is the opposite of comedy; if you want to be "diverse", you either have to put your unique quirks into it, or give up the intentions of being funny. Take Me Away, Freedom of '76, etc., all suffer from that "legitimate = genius" syndrome. I like Baby Bitch, though; you pointed out the similarity to Idiot Wind, and I think it works because it amplifies and exaggerates the aggressiveness of the song while contrasting it with the typical "laidback" Lennon style. In this case, immitating Dylan and Lennon is not enough: the joke is taken to another level. I could make the point that Buenas Tardes Amigo does the same, but that one bores me instead. And I am aware that the length and the slowness are intentional, and that is precisely what bores me.
The more Ween-ish tracks, like Roses Are Free and I Can't Put My Finger on It are pretty fun, especially the earlier, which is my favourite in here. As for What Deaner Was Talkin' About, they'd do much better songs in this style later on, like Stay Forever. But what REALLY piss me off in this album are the skit songs. You know why nobody else could do a song like Spinal Meningitis? Because nobody could be that STUPID. This song achieves the absurdity of offending me by not being offensive enough. It's an absolute low point for dark humour. It gives dark humour a bad reputation. I don't like being taken for granted like that, I mean, I'm not one who thinks that simply writing a song about a child dying of meningitis is automatically "edgy". There's an immense abyss between having a good idea and executing it well (that song, as well as Randall Munroe, are somewhere near the bottom of that abyss). The HIV Song could be accused of the same thing, but there's so little effort in it that it doesn't even deserve being talked about, and Mister Would You Please Help My Pony is too dumb to be dumb. Songs like these give me the feeling that Ween was overconfident at this time; they were thrilled by having an actual professional recording studio available and simply got lazy. The fun bits on this album are utterly swallowed by the laziness and ineptitude of the others. This album always gives me the image that the band are enjoying themselves TOO MUCH. And I am even more convinced of that by the shocking contrast between this and the Mollusk / White Pepper / Quebec trio, in which the band does sound confident, but also truly enamoured with music. Perhaps 12 Golden Country Greats proved to be an exercise in humbleness for Ween? All I know is that Chocolate and Cheese is the sound of Ween enamoured with themselves; it's 50 minutes of masturbation, in the worst possible sense of the word. And I say that with a bit of a mea culpa because I've been there before... when I was about 17. Then I grew up and never looked back.
Ivo Samuel Giosa Domínguez (ivosamuelgiosa.gmail.com) (06/13/17)
When I realised that the only comment this album has is negative I decided to write a comment.
Unfortunately, the same thing that happens to me with Super Mario Bros 3 happens to me with this album. I love Super Mario Bros, but I can't rave on and on about it beyond the level of "It's a great game with genius level design and really entertaining". Same thing with this album: it's a great album with genius songwriting and really fun and entertaining.
I mean, how did they do it? These songs are completely naked and basic and YET this is unquestionably my favourite Ween album (which is saying a lot). I mean, "What Deaner Was Talking About" has like two melodies and yet seems to me like a great example on how to make a marvelously emotional and catchy song. It's one of those song that never fail in making me shiver in pleasure.
This translates to every song on the album, really. "Voodoo Lady" is the greatest Hendrix rocker Hendrix never did. And it doesn't even have that much distortion or guitar wank! You just get it on the "solo" part, which might as well be made by a white noise machine (in a good way).
Another thing that impresses me is the flow of the album. Like, okay, it seems really bizarre and weird and chaotic, but can you imagine "Freedom of '76" immediately after "Take Me Away"? Or "Voodo Lady" after "Mister Won't You Please Help My Pony?"? I sure don't.
Anyway, this is a GREAT album and the perfect introduction to Ween. If someone asked me "What kind of music do you like?" I'd tell them to listen to this album. Go get it now!
Best song: Piss Up A Rope or You Were The Fool
The album's best known song, and a live favorite, is "Piss Up a Rope," a masterful effort of wedging Dean's love of excessive vulgarity, misogyny and tastelessness into the world of honky-tonk. Only Ween would even think of writing a honky-tonk song with lines like "For the last six months I've been packing your bags/You can wash my balls with a warm wet rag/'Til my balls feel smooth and soft like silk/I'm sick of your mouth and your 2% milk," and while it's oh so easy to condemn the song for a lot of reasons, it's so shamelessly over-the-top that I can't help but love it and sing along to it happily. The mid-song guitar solo is really fun, too, featuring a tone I wouldn't normally expect to hear in this context.
While it's great that this album has "Rope" on it, though, the downside of its inclusion is that it makes such a strong impression that it becomes easy to assume that the rest of the album is in the same vein. It's not. The only other track on the album that can be easily categorized as "Ween does a genre parody that's full of immaturity and vulgarity" is "Mister Richard Smoker," and that track has far less to do with country than it does with 20s speakeasy flapper jazz (the opening line of "Hey Mister Smoker, you're a poopy poker" wouldn't be nearly as funny in any other context). Much more typical of the rest of the album is a track like the opening "I'm Holding You," a perfectly authentic-sounding (and why shouldn't it, given the collection of Nashville talent gathered for this album) old-time country ballad that just happens to make some lyrical choices that most country musicians would never think of. You know, stuff like "I'm holding something more precious than fine ore, baby, I'm holding you" or "I'm breathin' the fumes of the grid that rid my lobe of oxygen" that helps the track walk the parody/tribute line quite deftly.
Another good example of the album's preferred vein of humor comes in "Powder Blue," a rather subdued, minimalist number that culminates in a chance to introduce some of the guest performers and give them a brief chance to stand out. And so Gene gives a nod to Bobby Ogdin on piano, Charlie McCoy on harmonic, Russ Hicks on steel guitar (giving all three a chance to play some nice licks), and finally Muhammed Ali. Muhammed Ali??!! Why would a country song end with an introduction to Muhammed Ali and minute-long snippet of one of his most famous monologues? Because it's Ween and it's ridiculous, that's why. I laugh inside every time I hear the end, and if you have one of the later pressings that cuts out after the introduction of Ali (Ali's lawyers demanded that it be removed, but early pressings accidentally included it anyway), you should try to find one that has the speech in order to get the full effect.
Of the other six, the two most upbeat ones ("Japanese Cowboy," "Pretty Girl") always strike me as decent and not much more, but the other ones resonate with me quite a bit. These are the songs that I feel most strongly support the notion that Ween was much more interested in making Ween-style music with a country-ish base than in just making a parody of country music. "I Don't Wanna Leave You on the Farm" and "Help Me Scrape the Mucus From My Brain" don't have anything resembling sophistication in their lyrics, of course, but there's a warmth in their nonsense that I find incredibly appealing, and dressing these melodies in all these glorious bits of steel guitar makes them hit all sorts of good spots in me. Even better is "You Were the Fool," which people seem to ignore because there's nothing the least bit funny in it (though it does have absurd lyrics like "You can speak with a turtle just by flipping him around"), but which strikes me as the most inspired piece of melody-writing on the album. For some reason, I find myself fascinated by the impact on me from two little details: the slightly jarring key-change just before "Jim" in the chorus, and the way the chorus could resolve at the first iteration of the title but instead picks itself back up and fleshes itself out a lot more. Plus, I like all of the background guitar noise in the last minute.
"Fluffy," then, makes for a fitting and stirring conclusion. The "story" of the lyrics goes nowhere, of course, but somehow the quiet silly banality (it's impossible for me not to smirk a little bit after a while at the melodrama of the phrase "Fluffy on the porch") of the lyrics loops around and becomes poigniant, giving a quiet majesty to the proceedings. The simple repeated electric guitar lines at the end, played over the acoustic pattern of the rest of the song, have a surprising amount of emotional kick as well.
Naturally, this ended up a bit as an album without a clear fanbase; country fans would have plenty of reason to sneer at it, and fans of Ween from the beginning would have felt incredibly confused and maybe even kinda betrayed. Fortunately, while there's still not much impetus for country fans in general to hear this, Ween fans generally ended up coming around to it, and I'm glad. Don't make this one of your first five Ween purchases, but if you think you're a Ween fan, it's essential for you to hear this.
Best song: There are a LOT of good choices
If I had reviewed the band in 2007 (or even up through 2011), then, I probably would have given The Mollusk top-billing for the group. As is, the more I listened to this (and the more I listened to Chocolate and Cheese, which just kept getting better and better), the harder it became for me to ignore little things that made it so I wouldn't be able to make a strong case to myself for this crossing the threshold between a D and E grade. This is still an album I love immensely, but it's definitely one I feel more comfortable giving a high D than a low E.
For me, The Mollusk falls into the category of "great albums that have been oversold." This is almost always recommended as the first pickup for people unfamiliar with the band, and while I don't think any of the statements generally used in praise of the album are untrue per se, I do think that they provide an expectation of an experience that the album isn't quite in position to deliver to a newbie. The album is generally praised as a great send-up of 70s art rock (which is partially true, but this sure isn't a prog rock version of 12 Golden Country Greats), mixing it together with old-style sea-shanties ... but the first thing a new listener to the band will hear, if this is their first album, is a goofy music-hall parody. The second thing will indeed be a great homage/parody of art rock, but then the third thing will be some nonsensical waltz (sort of), and the fourth thing will be an insanely fast New Wave-style rocker (sort of), and pretty soon the listener will be all mixed up and wondering how the hell people could love this album. As somebody who's come to love Ween and love this album, of course, I'm very happy with how all of the strange elements of the album come together, but I'm not at all convinced anymore that this is an ideal way to try and get people into the group. Put another way: The Mollusk may be a well-conceived, meticulously-crafted variation on the joke and greatness of Ween, but GWS and C&C are the joke and greatness of Ween.
Still, there's a truckload of great material on the album, and choosing one of the songs over the other just seems impossible. Three of the tracks fall cleanly within the "art rock pastiche" label that often gets attached to this album, and if "The Golden Eel" seems a little weak in comparison, it's only because the other two are so magnificent (and "The Golden Eel" is definitely really good, with a fascinating riff, epic-style guitar breaks and silly but attractive lyrics). The title track might deserve its label as an Emerson, Lake and Palmer tribute (everybody mentions the similarity in vibe and style to "Lucky Man," and I can't pretend it isn't accurate), but it's an awesome ELP tribute, celebrating their fun brand of acoustic balladry and lovely (when they wanted) use of analog synths (I have no idea how "authentic" the actual keyboards used are to the era, but they sure sound like they're Moogs). It might seem odd for Ween to like ELP, but if Ween's career had shown anything to this point, it's that they liked everything, and if somebody tries to look for mockery (other than the usual gentle tweaking) in this song they'll come up empty.
"Buckingham Green" is even more of a prog rock emulation, this time tapping into the kind of majesty and power that Genesis and the earliest King Crimson could pull off at their very best. Yes, the song is just empty theater beyond a certain point, but lots of great prog rock (and rock in general, but that's for another time) is basically empty theater, and I love lots of prog rock just fine. The build from the acoustic guitar line mimicking the acoustic melody into the RATTLE THE WALLS guitar in the middle back into the main part, with the guitars gone and replaced with (synth) strings, is something that can stand up to most great prog rock, and the vocal melody is great enough that I can sing the silly lyrics to myself without any shame. The track is three minutes, but it easily has depth and ideas to fill up twice as much time. Interestingly, the band had been playing this song live as far back as '93; it might not have had all the pieces glued together in order yet, and it needed the kind of solid production the band didn't have available to it at the time, but the idea of putting together a prog rock song isn't something that suddenly came to the band while making this album. This track was years in the making, and it was worth the wait.
Once the prog rock songs are dealt with, the rest of the album suddenly doesn't seem like such a giant departure from what had come before. The opening "I'm Dancing in the Show Tonite" is ridiculous as hell, but it's the kind of self-deflation that belongs on a supposedly "serious" Ween album, and I certainly never skip it. The bulk of "Polka Dot Tail" is probably the weakest stretch of the album (it's just sooo ... awkward), but the deep, echoey guitar breaks, all forceful yet sounding like they're coming from underwater, are enough to save the track. "I'll Be Your Jonny on the Spot" takes the metallic hillbilly music of the second half of "Up on the Hill" and updates it for the electronic age, filling the track with ultra-processed guitar solos that sound more like synth bloops than anything, and the juxtaposition of the music with the lyrics makes for a bizarre and awesome experience.
Many of the other tracks are easily pigeonholed; for instance, "The Blarney Stone" is a hilariously profane take on Irish pub music with Dean obviously savoring every shocking, piratey note. "It's Gonna Be (Alright)" is almost borderline adult contemporary, especially in its production and echoey drums, but it's top-notch balladry, one of the best combinations of moving and soothing I could expect from a song taking this approach. "Cold Blows the Wind" is a cover of a very old English folk song, with gloriously moody keyboards giving an extra emotional kick to a track that already had plenty. "Ocean Man" is basically a perfect upbeat pop song, with a fascinating drum sound, great use of ukelele and a fascinating amount of variation for a track that only lasts two minutes. And finally, "She Wanted to Leave" brings the ELP aspects full circle; the vocals and lyrics are big and pompous (about betrayal by a woman long cared for), but the music lives up to them, and I definitely feel a strong emotional surge in me during the final vocals over the big orchestral keyboard swell. The reprise of the opener, then, done slowly and mournfully as if played by a jack-in-the-box that needs its battery changed, is a perfect way to the end the album; it's a genuinely funny gag that doesn't need any dick jokes.
The other tracks aren't so easily categorized, though. I still have no idea how to label "Multilated Lips," though the total genre ambiguity is probably a large reason that I love it so much. I guess it's borderline psychedelic in the vocal effects, but it's so chill and yet so on edge in the rest, and the bizarre spoken part that constitutes the "chorus" is nearly impossible to forget once you've heard it. The fact that the music can stay so mellow and yet seemingly never have any resolution until the end (except possibly in the quiet mid-song guitar solo) is something I found disconcerting at first, but I love it for these aspects now. As for the other two, well, they're not among Ween's peaks, but I'm glad they're here. "Pink Eye (On My Leg)" is definitely better than, say, "Candi," as this manages to have an interesting thread of melody in the various synth doodlings over a relatively static base with some nice guitar color (for some reason the guitars in this song always remind me of Andy Summers from Zenyatta Mondatta, but I can't put my finger on why). And as for "Waving My Dick in the Wind," well, it wouldn't be a Ween album without some dick jokes, and I like the track. I guess it's kind of a less intense variation of the hillbilly music of "I'll Be Your Jonny on the Spot," but don't hold me to that description.
So here's the bottom line: this is a great album, one that I'd like everybody to listen to at least a couple of times in their lives, but it's not one that I think should be pushed by everybody as the clear starting point for the band. It's a slightly more consolidated and polished Ween than was expected at the time, and it has lots of great material, but it definitely doesn't make the same garish impression as C&C does, and I definitely don't think this album is significantly better than the ones that followed. If you got this album first, felt disappointed by the hype and decided to give up on the band, I really hope you'll consider trying a couple of the other ones rated highly on this page. Then, maybe, you can come back to this and then rightly appreciate the album on its own merits, which are considerable.
PS: If you haven't seen the unofficial music video for the title track, done with stop-motion Legos, you have to seek it out. It's marvelous.
Fernie Canto (cfern.canto.gmail.com) (01/13/13)
Reading the opening paragraphs of your review was an uncanny experience. I, too, started out my discovery of Ween through this
album, and it also left me very puzzled and frustrated. I didn't get the album. I think, though, that this initial difficulty was
the key for me to discover the album's inner greatness. You say something very interesting: that GodWeenSatan and Chocolate and
Cheese are the JOKE and the greatness of the band (I'd agree that Chocolate and Cheese is a joke, but for other reasons, as I've
made clear before). Well, The Mollusk completely blurs the line between "joke" and "seriousness". This time around, it's not a
joke. Yes, there are elements of comedy and humour, but they are an integral part of the album. The Mollusk is, quite simply, an
excellent album that is also comical, and that aspect puts it many notches above what they were doing before. This album draws the
line between cracking jokes and making art. Ween here realises that art isn't necessarily boring, straightfaced and serious -- in
other words, they realised something that people like Frank Zappa proved decades before. Ween are making a full blown artistic
statement with this album, but they didn't need to abandon their sense of humour. In fact, their humour becomes ENHANCED by the
fact that it's framed as a work of art. Instead of showing off how well they can immitate other bands and styles and make they
"hilarious" with wacky lyrics, they are making their own music, their own sound, their own idiom. They found a language that is
unique to them. I realise that some things are subjective, and I'm aware of the difference between opinion and fact, but I honestly
can't fathom how a fraud like Chocolate and Cheese can be regarded as a classic when confronted to The Mollusk, and how a person,
after listening to this record, still can think the "shocking" lyrics of Spinal Meningitis still have any humourous or artistic
value. So you're "shocked" by their lyrics? Hey, try listening to She Wanted to Leave, and realise how Ween do NOT make it clear
whether you should laugh or feel sad! The Mollusk is indeed a mindscrew, and it does not need any shock value. Indeed, there are
dick jokes, but the dick jokes work on a much more subtle and smart way. Ween does not invite you to laugh, nor do they dare you to
laugh. They put you in a state of discomfort. And isn't discomfort the very essence of art? The Mollusk is discomforting, but isn't
any less fun because of that. Once you dig into that, maybe you'll see why The Mollusk is so highly regarded, and you'll find that
the "low points" of the album are merely relative.
The other great thing about this album is that it wasn't an accidetal hit: it paved the way for their next albums. White Pepper and
Québec are not as excellent, but they're equally satisfying and fun. Unfortunately, someone convinced them to go back to making
"brown" albums and they lost their cool. But the trilogy of The Mollusk - White Pepper - Québec alone justifies Ween's existence.
Oh, and also, Cold Blows the Wind is the ONLY track in the album that sort of lets me cold; I think it's a tad too long and
unconvincing. I'm not the sort who complains about tunes being too long, but in this album, the flow is sort of broken. But the
following tracks quickly regain the pace, so it's not too bad.
Ivo Samuel Giosa Domínguez (ivosamuelgiosa.gmail.com) (06/13/17)
Only one comment on this album? What's wrong with people? This is a fantastic album. But since I pretty much agree with everything you said, I will tackle on the aspect people never seem to talk when discussing this album. That is, why do people think this is an prog-rock album? After all, this album has prog, music hall, waltz, psychedelic experiments, dick songs, pop, and all that stuff. What's the matter?
Well, a fellow commenter over me made a cool and interesting essay. But I'd like to add another point of view. That is, the reason people say this is an art-rock album is because of its thematic and conceptual flow. All of the songs revolve around one thing: water and sea. This is obvious on stuff like "Polka Dot Trail", or "The Golden Eel". But what about the guitar-synth solo on "I'll Be Your Johnny On The Spot"? Or the guitar sparseness of "Cold Blows The Wind" (not to mention, when you're on the sea on a boat, the wind is really cold)? Or the echoey sounds of "Mutilated Lips"? All of that is to give a strong conceptual flow.
Not to mention, doesn't this album have sort of a Theatresque flow? "Dancing In The Show Tonight" is like a look on the camerinos of the actors and then everything evokes to me images of Teenagers acting on a local Theatre. When I listen "Mutilated Lips" I can imagine crudely drawn and cut cardboard waves as much as I can imagine real waves.
So, what does that have to do with prog? Well, lots of prog albums have this kind of flow. Be it the fairy tale hell of "Nursery Cryme", or the adventurous sound of "The Yes Album" or the scientific mathematic craziness of "Discipline". They all revolve around a certain sound, or mood and give the listener a more "artsy" feel.
In other words, Ween somehow have made a prog album not by having prog usual characteristics, but rather by evoking the kind of sensations you get on this genre. Pure genius.
And the songs, melodies, hooks and whatever on this album are also genius. Listen to this album! Make yourself a favour!
Best song: Exactly Where I'm At
As with most Ween albums, it's impossible to tell what year this album was made without being told first (the band remains defiant in its almost total refusal to acknowledge musical genres originating after 1980), but that's fine by me. "Exactly Where I'm At" combines one of the all-time memorable drum tracks (from anybody I've heard, not just Ween) with an exquisite vocal melody (singing lyrics that somehow work both as serious introspection and bizarre imagery) and well-conceived production (the moment when everything snaps louder as Gene starts singing "I'm on stage ..." is a moment to behold), and by the second half the song has turned into a joyous frenzy of quasi-psychedelic guitar on par with any great guitar parts Dean had come up with to that point (Dean's great guitarwork on this album is a recurring theme in my love of the album). Psychedelia then gives way to its close relative, Eastern mysticism, in the glorious "Flutes of Chi," where Dean's guitar suddenly takes on a quintessential 60s hippie tone, and where the standard instrumentation mixes with some Eastern instruments and combines another extraordinary melody with lyrics that feel like a perfect embodiment of late-60s "I'm high as hell and this book of Chinese proverbs is really speaking to me" lyrical approaches (I like those approaches, mind you).
Fittingly, psychedelia doesn't make another appearance on the album beyond that, unless you want to loosely couple the baroque-pop-influenced instrumental "Ice Castles" to the genre. The only element I'd say that holds in common between any two other tracks is that both the upbeat piano-laced guitar-rocker "Even If You Don't" and the country-rock-ish "Falling Out" sound an awful lot to me like prime Wings (especially in the latter, where Gene's vocal sounds uncannily like how Paul would have sounded through a similar set of vocal effects), even if the nod isn't as obvious as the nods of some other tracks. The other "clear influence" tracks are all tons of fun; "Bananas and Blow" is another great example of Ween writing a song that feels like it should have been around forever but that only Ween was tasteless enough to write, "Stroker Ace" shows again that Dean could have stood up to any metal guitarist in the world in sheer speedy chops, and "Pandy Fackler" nails the Steely Dan vibe and musical approach so precisely that it's kinda terrifying.
The other four tracks, then, are just Ween making interesting rock music, and that makes me plenty happy. "Back to Basom" has some elements of early 70s Pink Floyd in it (some of the quieter guitar moments, some of the more climactic synth passages in the middle), but it has much less in common with established 70s prog rock bands than did "Buckingham Green," and I don't remember hearing anything quite like the "Call is waiting, contemplate a thread already spun" vocal part in my favorite old prog rock albums. "Stay Forever" is nothing more and nothing less than top-notch acoustic pop rock; one could pin a label of "this is basically an imitation of *such and such band*" on it if they wanted, but that would seem to me like reaching to fit Ween into a pure satire box that didn't really fit them at this point. "She's Your Baby" is a little sedate for an album-closer, but it's still a lovely piece of atmospheric balladry, and the slightly grunge-influenced "The Grobe" at least has a mildly interesting opening riff (the bulk of the song is kinda forgettable, to be honest).
Like most Ween albums, this album is a long way from any sort of "relevancy" in the way that relevancy is applied to most bands, but for somebody like me, this is an album that just gets more and more attractive the further it drifts into the past. This is every bit as essential to a Ween collection as The Mollusk, and I would recommend it to just about anybody.
Best song: Transdermal Celebration or I Don't Want It
For all of the album's eccentric tendencies, I admit that I find myself drawn most towards two of the more conventional numbers. "Transdermal Celebration" is an anthemic pop-rock blast, full of shifts in tempo and mood, with fantastic riffs, a rousing solo in the middle based in the vocal melody (but going to great places beyond), and lyrics that don't make too much sense when you read them closely but that sound great. Just as good, and even more startling in context, is the ballad "I Don't Want it," a totally straight-laced number that once again (just as with, say, "Stay Forever" from the last album) shows that Ween could write "normal" songs on par with anybody. If you can listen to "I understand it, but I don't want it" or the mid-song guitar solo, and not feel at least a slight emotional twinge, then I can only conclude that you're secretly made of stone.
Apart from these, "Tried and True" (an acoustic-driven, jaunty "rocker" with Gene using his low-pitched voice and which turns into 60s sitar-driven psychedelic pop in the middle), "Chocolate Town" (a pleasant shuffle wth a great melody and the most laid-back use of the word "punk-ass" ever) and the closing "If You Could Save Yourself (You'd Save Us All)" (an ultra-anthemic ballad with much more tweaked lyrics than another band would have used in a song with this melody), though, this album's kinda bonkers. "Zoloft" is every bit as unsettled and hazy and eerily calm as one would expect from a Ween song with the title, and the distorted voices (actually Gene saying all sorts of pseudo-profound gibberish) definitely reinforce the intended effect. The low-key acoustic (with some angry quiet production effects in the background) "Among His Tribe" kinda sounds like something that could have belonged on The Notorious Byrd Brothers, and it doesn't actually have any significant hooks, but it makes for an interesting interlude. "So Many People in the Neighborhood" starts off sounding like something from Pure Guava but with better production, then inexplicably turns into what I guess is a late-period Tom Waits imitation, then turns back into Pure Guava ... man, reviewing this album in track-by-track form leads to some strange descriptions.
Apart from a couple of interesting but not especially surprising numbers ("Happy Colored Marbles" veers from dark heaviness to light happiness with disturbing ease, and "Hey There Fancypants" is another excursion into the kind of flapper jazz first done on "Hey Richard Smoker"), as well as an instrumental (with unintelligible distorted rapidly-spoken voices in the background) that definitely could have fit in on Pure Guava without difficulty ("The F**ked Jam"), the rest of the album is basically a return to the band's fondness for atmospheric art-rock. "Captain" is just one repeated sentence in the lyrics ("Captain, turn around and take me home"), apart from a low-pitched unintelligible vocal in the middle, but the nature of the music allows the band to wrangle an incredible amount of resonance out of the phrase; the steady backing pattern, mostly covered in noisy but atmospheric guitar, then dominated at the end by a rousing keyboard sound, gives the track and sense and unity that would be hard to come by from the other elements. "Alcan Road" almost sounds like something I'd expect to hear on a Steve Hackett solo album (though Steve would have developed it beyond just the static background/processed vocals and probably would have added a fast part), and finally "The Argus" goes from a downbeat moody ballad with artsy lyrics into an upbeat number with a surprising amount of beauty and intricate interplay in the second half. Anybody who liked the artsier numbers on The Mollusk should definitely be all over "Captain" and "The Argus," at the least.
I can see where this album might have disappointed fans who'd come on board with The Mollusk, and I can also see where this album might have disappointed fans who hoped that a return to a "brown" sound literally meant a return to the approaches of earlier albums, but for me this album hits a pretty nice sweet spot between the old and the new. If you like lots of genre ambiguity to go with interesting melodies in your rock music, this is just as essential as other top-notch Ween albums.
Sterling Shaw (svsshaw.rocketmail.com) (03/13/13)
I've only really recently gotten into the wonderful world of Ween. This was the first Ween album I bought, and yes, I must say this
is my favorite of theirs. I even like it more than C&C. What I notice most is the high number of atmospheric tracks. It's almost as
if they were trying to make a prime art rock album. The other thing is that it doesn't sound like they are outright emulating other
bands on this album, other than a few tracks. If you were to pick an album that shows what Ween sounds like, this might be it. I
can't put my finger on where these songs would've originated. That being said, "Tried and True" might be my favorite. Ironic that
it's one of the more "normal" songs on here. "The Argus" sounds like another (successful) stab at prog rock. To me, it really
sounds like something off of an early King Crimson album. Gene Ween even sounds a little bit like Greg Lake on it. I don't know, I
just love this album. For being so diverse, it flows so well, and even has an almost "epic" feel to it. By the time the last song
is over, you're just like, "wow".
A grade on your scale? A very strong E, maybe an F. Hell, the only song I don't really like is "The F**ked Jam", so I think it's a
fair grade.
Best song: whatever
The material that is here does a good job of showing Ween's strengths as a live band at this point, or at least points that I consider strengths. Ween live is pretty different from Ween studio; not only does Gene's voice sound surprisingly different (he would use vocal effects and weird vocal approaches that he wouldn't bother attempting live), but the band placed a much heavier emphasis on guitars, and they had no qualms about turning songs into extended vehicles for Dean's noise jamming. The noisy mid-section of "Voodoo Lady," in particular, gets stretched out much further than before, and the borderline New-Wave approach of "I'll Be Your Jonny on the Spot" gets exchanged for metallic riffage and extended soloing. For somebody who wants their favorite material done in a way close to the studio versions, this may seem kinda obnoxious, but for me, having a clear differentiation between the studio and live versions helps justify the existence of the live versions, and gives a reason to listen to them instead of the studio ones. In other words, I like these versions just fine.
Truth be told, though, the other tracks on this album don't differ tremendously from their studio counterparts once the differences in vocals and the "live vibe" are accounted for. The most stark change comes in "Buckingham Green," where the guitars are even more pronounced (coming out of the mid-song guitar solo into heavy guitar chords instead of the strings makes for a very different experience), but otherwise, things are fairly by-the-book. This certainly isn't like other live albums (not yet reviewed, but I'll get to them) where the band would make "L.M.L.Y.P." over half an hour long or other such things. It's definitely interesting that I can finally make out the weird interlude vocals in "Zoloft," though.
Basically, if you like Ween, and you don't mind a little bit of guitar jamming, you'll like the DVD, which means you'll like this. If you don't like Ween, you won't like this. That wasn't so hard, was it?
Best song: Gabrielle or Monique The Freak
It's pretty easy to guess that the opening "Tastes Good on th' Bun" comes from the sessions for The Pod, what with the ugly (in an intriguing way) combination of the cheap drum machine, the crunchy guitars and the distorted vocals endlessly repeating a nonsense phrase. It's also very tempting to guess that "Big Fat Fuck" comes from around the same time, but it's actually from the 1999 album (in shortened form). Then again, while the Pod/Pure Guava era was full of tracks with this sort of base pattern, it never had guitars that were treated in quite this way; the breaks sound a lot like 90s King Crimson in parts. In any case, I enjoy both of these tracks plenty; they're both as immature as can be, but that hasn't stopped me yet with Ween, and I'm not gonna start now.
The biggest highlights of the album have clearly discernable inspirations; "Gabrielle" (from the C&C demos) is a dead-on imitation of a Thin Lizzy rocker, and "Monique the Freak" is a return to the band's love of Prince. The rest of the album is much harder to pin down, but isn't much less enjoyable. "I Fell in Love Today" and the closing "Someday" are great examples of the kind of pop balladry the band had mastered by the time White Pepper and Quebec came out; the way silly phrases are so effortlessly woven into the memorable songcraft is a joy to behold. "Boys Club" is a cute bit of Soul-based pop, but not really like any Soul-based pop I've ever heard before (supposedly it's a parody of Michael McDonald, but if I've heard any Michael McDonald I'm unaware of it). "Did You See Me?" is a great Mollusk outtake that absolutely would have made that album better if it had made the cut instead of "Polka Dot Tail," as it would have provided a solid side-one counterpart to "Buckingham Green" in the department of "epic guitar/synth prog anthem" (it also has a bit in the middle that sounds vaguely like the main riff of "To Cry You a Song" by Jethro Tull). "Transitions" is great, relaxed jazz-pop with a nice mix of keyboard and guitar tones, and it would have made a great inclusion on, say, Quebec.
Pretty much the only tracks that I'm not very fond of are "How High Can You Fly" (a decent introductory guitar line somewhat ruined by vocal effects) "Israel" (a saxophone-driven smooth-jazz vamp with Hebrew spirituality sprinkled on top, and not very entertaining) and "The Rift" (a lengthy, slow, hookless number full of go-nowhere sound effects). Given that this is an album of former rejects, though, 3 duds out of 12 is a rather nice efficiency rate. If you're a serious Ween fan, there's no excuse not to have heard the five or so best numbers on the album, and it's worth picking this album up to get them.
Best song: I Got To Put The Hammer Down
I'm quite the fan of Ween's extensive diversity, but I also feel that the main aspect that pushes Ween's genre exercises beyond kitsch is the way these exercises (a) were great songs in their own right and (b) warped and mutated the genres in question. "King Billy" is just synth-reggae, "Light Me Up" is just salsa, and neither do much to distinguish themselves beyond, "Hey, look, we're doing a reggae song/a salsa song." It doesn't help at all that "King Billy" is about six minutes long, either. These two tracks have to be near the bottom of my list of favorite Ween tracks, and they take up about half of this release. I can see where somebody would want to put on a face of enjoying these tracks in the name of "look at me, I like all kinds of music," but I would be fascinated to know exactly what the specific positives of these tracks are supposed to be.
The other three tracks are a lot of fun, though, so they salvage things pretty decently. "Friends" is a great tribute to slick synth-heavy dance music, and while I don't really care about this genre more than I care about reggae or salsa, I find it difficult to resist the vocal melody and the cheery lyrics here. "I Got to Put the Hammer Down" is another song in a genre I don't normally care about, but I absolutely love this song; the lyrics (I guess they're about being a big-wig with a drug habit) are hilariously sleazy, and the nasty guitar part in the last minute meshes very well with the synth-y foundation. And finally, Gene sounds hilarious imitating the typical vocal stylings that would have accompanied "Slow Down Boy" had it been written in the early 80s, and the song has the general feel of one of Ween's high-quality genre exercises (the mocking-yet-celebrating vibe that I like so much).
My recommendation is to get the three best songs independently, but don't bother with the album as a whole (especially since, for some reason, it tends to be priced like a regular album despite the short length). It might be unfair to pick on an EP, but this is definitely the worst Ween album (not counting the pre-GWS stuff obviously).
Best song: Lullaby or Woman And Man
Note that I said "almost." The album certainly does feel like a slightly inferior version of Chocolate and Cheese, but Chocolate and Cheese is such a great album that there's a ton of space between "equal to Chocolate and Cheese" and "mediocre," and Ween definitely come much closer to the former than the latter with this album. Just like most Ween albums, La Cucaracha is full of aspects that I value highly in rock albums; there's significant diversity (and unlike on parts of Friends, the diversity here reaches beyond rote exercise), there's an interesting ebb and flow, there are memorable melodies and there are interesting arrangements. I suppose there are some relative duds; the remix of "Friends" is less Euro-trashy and thus less fun than on The Friends EP, for instance. "Spirit Walker" has some moments of genuine beauty, and it's fun to hear all of the fun that Gene has with Autotune, but it probably would have been better without Autotune and with a little bit less fluff. "Shamemaker" is basically a fun foray into 00s pop punk, but it's still the band working in a genre that's kinda faceless by its very nature, and the best they can do with it is make a pretty decent song.
I quite like the rest, though. Some of the songs, as usual, are relatively easy to peg into specific genres, and once again there are definite winners in this regard. The opening "Fiesta" is basically synth-based mariachi music, and it's an absolute hoot, especially in the part in the middle where they start having some fun with synth percussion. "Learnin' to Love" at first sounds like an unskilled return to making Country parodies, but it also has a fascinating section in the middle where the guitar plays along to synth voices (or Gene's vocals processed to sound like synth voices, whatever), and while neither of these two main ideas is amazing individually, together they make for an interesting combination. "My Own Bare Hands" is the album's requisite heavy Dean rocker, full of lumbering heavy riffs, and it's so full of startling vulgarity, even by Dean's standards, that it manages to leave its mark, even though I could see somebody dismissing it as a retread. "The Fruit Man" is dub reggae, and it's much more interesting "King Billy" ever could be thanks to Gene's completely ridiculous vocals and the silly lyrics.
The two best tracks come near the end, are easily categorizable, and couldn't be more different from each other. "Lullaby" matches its title, and while the lyrics have some typical Ween eccentricities (I doubt there have been any other lullabies of note that prominently featured the words "ghost man"), the simple piano melody (with light orchestration) is absolutely lovely, and the song would absolutely work as a genuine lullaby. And "Woman and Man" is prog rock!! I don't mean the kind of prog rock that appeared on The Mollusk or Quebec, I mean full-out genuine multi-part 11-minutes-long 60s/70s throwback prog rock, with lyrics like "Ocean is land/ocean is land covered with water," and the only instance where Dean's favored live playing style made it onto a studio track. The opening couple of minutes are bit of directionless hippy rambling, but once the bongos pick up the pace, leading into those great noisy discordant riffs, which in turn become a launching pad for incredible noise, I'm happy as can be.
I'm not especially sure how to categorize the remaining tracks (I mean, they can be pegged with some effort, but it's not the same as saying "'The Fruit Man' is the reggae track"), but I like them just the same. "Blue Balloon" is very low-key, a mellow rhythmic guitar-driven song with an incessant synth sound that I suppose represents the balloon in question, and while it doesn't leave much of an impression in terms of atmosphere or setting a feel for the rest of the album, it definitely sits in the same genre-ambiguity mold that made me like, say, "Transitions" so much. "Object" is basically a simple folk song, I suppose, but the lyrics are definitely creepy in a way that stands out, and I quite like the melody in the "Why sit in the shade ..." part. "Sweetheart in the Summer" is basically throwback 70s-FM orchestrated guitar-pop (sung by Dean), and while it's not a fantastic (it's a little faceless) number, I still find it a pleasant interlude between "Shamemaker" and "Lullaby." And finally, the closing "Your Party," while having some smooth jazz aspects, is sleazy and atmospheric as hell (largely thanks to the saxophone work of vaunted session man David Sanborn), and it becomes pretty obvious that this isn't the kind of party where you just chit-chat and play charades. You definitely wouldn't ever hear this song on a smooth jazz listening station, that's for sure, even if the band was popular enough to merit it.
So yes, this album feels a bit like an anti-climax, and has the feel of Ween working at 85% effectiveness, but an 85% effective Ween is just fine by me. It is a bit of a shame that the band ended up going out with a bit of a whimper (after this album, there was intermittent touring, marred by Gene's necessary stints in rehab, before Gene decided he wanted to record as Aaron Freeman from now on and left the band), but that's only by the standards the band set for itself. I recommend this to all Ween fans.
GodWeenSatan: The Oneness - 1990 Twin/Tone Records
C
(Very Good / Great)
The Pod - 1991 Shimmy Disc
B
(Very Good)
Pure Guava - 1992 Elektra
9
(Good)
*Chocolate And Cheese - 1994 Elektra*
E
(Great)
12 Golden Country Greats - 1996 Elektra
A
(Very Good / Good)
The Mollusk - 1997 Elektra
D
(Great / Very Good)
White Pepper - 2000 Elektra
D
(Great / Very Good)
Quebec - 2003 Sanctuary
D
(Great / Very Good)
Live In Chicago - 2004 Sanctuary
A
(Very Good / Good)
Shinola Vol. 1 - 2005 Chocodog
B
(Very Good)
The Friends EP - 2007 Chocodog
7
(Mediocre / Good)
La Cucaracha - 2007 Chocodog
B
(Very Good)