The Mollusk

10/10

  If forced to choose at gunpoint I suppose I'd have to say The Mollusk is my favorite Ween album.  I still remember buying it the day it came out back in 1997 and studying the strange creature on the cover just wondering what the heck waited within.

  Well it turned out, it was probably Ween's strongest, most accessible, and best produced set of songs to date.  Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of weirdness to be found.  Right from the strange morphing vocals of the very first track, which was apparently a cover of some sort of children's dance song, this is recognizably a Ween album.  There's typical Ween humor to be found all over the dang place as well.  But the good news is after the "joke" wears off you're left with a whole lot of really awesome songs with high re-listenability.  There seems to be an ocean theme at work across these tracks, but they still manage to include plenty of genre hopping as is their modus operandi.  And there's plenty of experimentation... there's just nothing particularly ear-splitting or abrasive.  There's no Mourning Glory to be found here.  It's definitely not The Pod or Pure Guava.  There are signs of... gasp... maturation.  There's even a straightforward pretty love song in the form of It's Going to Be (Alright).  If there's any irony or snark to be found in that song, I sure can't detect it.

  But the thing is, if you've been paying attention they've already started to "mature" and include sincere songs prior to this.  I'm pretty sure Sarah from Pure Guava isn't meant as any kind of joke.  Even Birthday Boy from their first album seems to me to be "serious."  They've already become more accessible and utilized better production on the two albums prior to this.  So really it's just a natural continuation of the path they were already on.  Did I mention the songs are awesome?

  Looking over the tracklist, the only one I can point to as a sort of weak link is the instrumental Pink Eye (On My Leg), but even that one has a fun, catchy melody to it and isn't unpleasant to listen to.  Elsewhere you've got the supremely catchy Ocean Man, which there's no reason shouldn't have been a huge hit.

  I really like the title track as well.  There's this little instrumental break in it that makes me picture a Sgt. Pepper-ish band of Sea Monkeys playing crazy psychedelic instruments.  In other words, cool stuff.  Mutilated Lips has a lengthy chorus of strange imagery, and I really like the higher vocal effect they use when they repeat it.  Buckingham Green is an epic, complex song that goes through multiple sections during it's just over 3 minute run-time.  There are a couple songs that if you examine closely appear to be leftovers from the country album like I'll Be Your Jonny On the Spot and Waving My Dick in the Wind, but they've applied cool synths to them and they fit right in.  I do notice that Waving My Dick in the Wind seems to be a little bit of a re-write melodically speaking of I Don't Want to Leave You on the Farm from the country album.  It's different enough though that I can let it slide pretty easily.

  Overall there does seem to be a prog feel to this album.  I wasn't into prog rock at all when this came out, and I still enjoyed the hell out of it.  That's one of the great things about Ween.  They're extremely knowledgeable about all sorts of music, and they're able to translate it in a way that makes their songs enjoyable even if you don't know the genre or band they're parodying at that particular moment.  If you do come to discover those genres or bands later it just adds another layer of enjoyment to it.

  I can understand if a certain subset of Ween fans misses the lo-fi rawness of some of their earlier albums, but this is far from a sellout.  I also think this is a decent enough entry point to the band for newbies.  If I could only recommend one Ween album, I'm pretty sure it would be this one.  It might not be a "perfect" album, but it's damn good and I can give it a full 10 score without feeling guilty about it.

 

12 Golden Country Greats

8.5/10

  One of the truly great things about Ween is the way in which they often confound expectations and challenge the listener.  After four albums of genre hopping and general weirdness you might have said to yourself now this is a band that might do just about anything.  Even so I, for one, was certainly not expecting them to follow up Chocolate and Cheese by going to Nashville and hiring renowned old school Nashville musicians and making an authentic sounding country album.

  I actually remember making a joke before this album was announced on a radio show I had in college about Ween playing country music.  My roommate had called up my show pretending to be a redneck and asking me to play some country music and I said I'd put on some Ween, seeing as how they were the furthest thing from country I could think of.  The joke turned out to be on me when this was the next album they released.

  Granted you could point towards Drifter in the Dark on Chocolate and Cheese as having a bit of a country vibe, but it doesn't even come close to the assault of fiddles and harmonica honky tonk piano and pedal steel guitar they unleash on this album.  Gene even sings in a normal voice on most of these songs and reveals he has a very nice natural vocal instrument.

  Now at the time this came out country was probably about my least favorite genre, so I had some difficulty getting into this.  I appreciated the audacity of Ween releasing an actual country album and I thought it was funny that they did it, but I had some trouble at first overcoming my own distaste for country music.  Consequently for awhile I would say this was my least liked and least listened to Ween album.

  But gradually I started to notice that I really liked some of the songs.  I Don't Want to Leave You on the Farm is a really pretty song in a straight-forward and not obviously jokey way.  Likewise Japanese Cowboy is a nice tune, even if it bears some melodic resemblance to Chariots of Fire, as Ween themselves have been quick to acknowledge.  I really enjoy I'm Holding You as well and think it really shows off Gene's natural voice.

  You know what else?  This album's pretty damn funny at times.  The random introduction of Mohammed Ali after other members of the band on Powder Blue is pretty hilarious.  I heard they had to remove it from later versions of the album due to legal reasons, which is a shame.  Elsewhere Mr. Richard Smoker and especially Piss Up a Rope provide the vulgar humor that let you know this is, in fact, a Ween album.

  Nowadays I can honestly say I enjoy listening to the whole album.  I also have to give props to Ween for not only doing the unexpected, but forcing me out of my comfort zone in the process.  Country still isn't my favorite genre, but they helped me to realize it's not all Toby Keith and Garth Brooks.  They've made me more appreciative of the old guard of country such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and of course the titular golden country greats who served as the musicians on this album.  This is a band that really does love and respect the music that they're ostensibly sending up.  Who would've thought the obnoxious stoners responsible for God Ween Satan had it in them?  But even looking back at that album it becomes obvious that they really do like a wide range of music and that's why they genre hop so much.  They're not putting stuff down, they're celebrating it.  This is part of why I dig this band so much.

Chocolate and Cheese

9.0/10

  This is an incredibly strange album by any normal standards, but by Ween standards they were starting to sound kind of normal.  This is largely due to the production.  Whereas they had previously recorded at home on a 4-track cassette recorder, this album marks the first time they utilized a more "professional" recording studio.  I'm sure some hardcore fans of their early albums see this as a big sellout moment, and indeed this certainly marks a turning point in the sound of the band as all their future releases would see much cleaner production.  It's certainly a little easier on the ears for a newbie.

It's not as if they've thrown out everything that makes them Ween.  The silly humor, variety of voices and styles, and of course profanity is all still here.  And any album that has Spinal Meningitis and The HIV song on it can't really be called selling out to the mainstream.  They've moved away a little from the super whacked out druggy stuff in favor of genre hopping, although Candi remains as a throwback to their earlier days.  It's probably the weakest song on here though.

Overall the songwriting really does shine and they prove themselves adept at pulling off a multitude of styles from the opener Take Me Away, which sort of has a Tom Jones kind of vibe to it to the pseudo country feel of Drifter in the Dark.  Gener gets to really show off his vocal chops as he belts out Freedom of 76 in a smooth falsetto while Deaner demonstrates his guitar skills on the lengthy instrumental A Tear for Eddie.

I remember actually hearing Voodoo Lady on the radio a little bit when this came out!  The first time I heard it I didn't know who Ween was and I kind of didn't like it.  I never in a million years would have guessed at that point that I was listening to what would become one of my favorite bands.  And yes, I dig Voodoo Lady.  It's got a nice groove to it and that oogie oogie oogie oogie part is pretty catchy.

Baby Bitch is a pretty acoustic driven song with a fairly vicious message.  Good tune though.  And actually I can relate to it.  It even name checks Birthday Boy from God Ween Satan.  I don't know why, but I like when bands reference their own songs.  I'm easily amused sometimes, what can I say?

Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down was disturbing as hell and kind of terrifying the first time I heard it.  The vocal effect they use makes Gene sound like a creepy little kid and then the lyrics about "Am I gonna see God, Mommy?  Am I going to die?" are just downright creepy and kind of wrong.  But the thing is once you get past the initial shock and almost horror of it, there's a damn good song there.  When they get to the "Smile on mighty Jesus" chorus part, well that kicks ass.  I'm so desensitized to the main part now that I almost forget that if someone's unfamiliar with the band and you play that song around them they might think you're some kind of psycho.  But the thing is they're not making fun of people with spinal meningitis.  They're freaked out by it, too, and they're kind of conveying that feeling in musical form.

They tackle another disease in a slightly different way in the form of The HIV Song.  It's a bunch of cheerful almost carnival like music interspersed with a spoken word "AIDS" or "HIV."  It's that juxtaposition of wildly inappropriate music with a horrific disease that makes this track.

Elsewhere Roses Are Free is a cool song that Phish decided to cover for some reason and now a bunch of hippies think Ween is covering a Phish song.  I'm sure Phish does a perfectly fine rendition of it, but I'm not really a fan of hippie jam bands, so I'll stick with Ween's version.

My favorite song on here is probably What Deaner Was Talking About.  I've heard it said that it's kind of in the style of a Wings song and I can see that.  But it's just got a really fantastic melody.  It's a truly solid pop song that can stand up there with the best of them.  Whenever I meet people who think Ween are nothing but fart jokes and weird noise, this is one of the songs I play for them because it's catchy and pretty undeniably a great song.

Chocolate and Cheese isn't just an album with a lot of really good songs on it.  It's a fun album.  I like Radiohead as much as the next guy, but they really can't say that about any of their albums.  This is an album that just might convert you to Ween if you weren't convinced by their earlier, weirder ones.       

Pure Guava

9.5/10

  Depending on where you're coming from this is either one of the awesomest or most irritating albums ever.  When I first listened to it I probably fell into the latter category.  The only song I remotely liked at first was Sarah, as it's the closest thing to traditional sounding music on here and it's actually kind of pretty.  The rest of it sounded like noise with various annoying voices singing over the top.  There's no doubt these are Frankenstein mutants of songs and it's kind of crazy that this was released on a major label.  It's even crazier when you think some record executive signed them to said major label based on their previous album The Pod.  Apparently this was recorded at the same time as The Pod.  In fact it could almost be looked at as songs that didn't make the cut for The Pod, but now they've been given some sort of major label production polish that makes them sound even weirder.

  The early 90's really was an insane time as far as underground bands scoring major label record contracts.  I guess after Nirvana hit it big and upset the established order of things, record companies had no clue what the kids wanted and thus scrambled to sign every band that was remotely "alternative."  Hence Pure Guava coming out on Elektra records.  They even scored a bit of a hit with Push th' Little Daisies.

  So anyway I can't say I was initially a fan of this.  It was kind of a chore to sit through and it sort of seemed like it was weird simply for the sake of being weird.  But then when I was college and beginning to mess around with drugs and alcohol a little bit I came back to this.  I kind of put it on just for fun after getting really high for one of my first times.  All of a sudden I "got" this album in a major way.  It was almost like hearing music for the first time, or hearing a completely new kind of music.  All of those songs that seemed like pointless noise suddenly revealed themselves to have purpose.  Mourning Glory which had previously appeared to be nothing more than a lengthy mess of irritating feedback with a go nowhere semi-story about some pumpkins became the most amazingly brilliant thing I'd ever heard.  I remember having this distinct image of an electric starfish piercing my head with its arms as I listened to the song.  It was kind of intense and even painful but in an astonishing way.  And that story about the pumpkins became strangely meaningful and hilarious.  Long story short, my mind was blown.

  Now you could easily just dismiss this as being due to drugs and how all music sounds better when you're high, and to an extent you'd be correct.  I think Pure Guava definitely benefits from not being sober.  But it does so in a way that's above and beyond a lot of other music I've heard.  I'm doubtlessly inflating the score of this album due to both nostalgia and because it introduced me to the concept of music sounding different when you're high.  Lots of people have probably had lots of different albums fill that role for them and thus those albums will hold a special place in their hearts.  But Pure Guava really is some freaking deliciously out there brilliant music.  And the best part was once I realized that I could enjoy it without having to be high.  It was like the door had been unlocked and now I understood it.  On some level it changed the way I listened to music from that point on.  So yeah, I'm always going to have some bias towards this album.

  That said, some of this rules harder than other parts of it, but I think every track "works."  I dig opener Little Birdy a lot and The Stallion Pt. 3 is seriously whacked out in the best possible way.  Big Jilm is oddly catchy and hilarious at the same time.  I really do picture some big old hillbilly or something and the weird deep voice they use sells it.  The image kind of cracks me up.

  Oddly enough Push th' Little Daisies, despite being the "hit" off the album might be one of my least favorite tracks on here.  I like it.  It's once again catchy in a strange way, but it doesn't touch the bizarre awesomeness of Touch My Tooter or some of the other songs I've previously mentioned.

  Some of the other tracks here definitely seem like stoned jokes, although sometimes brilliantly so.  Reggaejunkiejew is driven by a memorable synth line and contains some really cool strange noises, even as it consists of lyrics like "Fuck you reggaejunkiejew" over and over.  I suppose it could be deemed offensive, but I've heard it's about a particular annoying person that rubbed Gene Ween, who happens to be Jewish, the wrong way.

  Elsewhere Hey Fat Boy (Asshole) is kind of simplistic and crass, but also kind of funny and catchy.  And at less than two minutes long it doesn't wear out its welcome.  Loving U Through It All kind of sounds like they were making it up as they recorded... like maybe they agreed on a few lyrics they would sing in advance, but then they don't always hit the same lyrics at the same time.  It's still listenable somehow.  That's one of the coolest things about this album.  There are probably a few songs that were being "written" simultaneously as they were being recorded.  Some of the songs have noticeable mistakes or the guys start laughing or something in the middle.  You can even hear one of them say "You fucked it up again!" in the middle of one of the songs.  Yet somehow it all works.  At least within the twisted, warped logic of Pure Guava it does.  Plus the mistakes, laughter, and chatter all just add to the feeling that this was probably a lot of fun for Gene and Dean to make.

  I probably wouldn't recommend this as the first Ween album to listen to, unless you're a stoner who's into weird music.  They definitely have other albums that are more accessible and easier on the ears.  But this is still a really cool album if you can get your head around it and it'll always be one of my favorites.  This is probably the last really weird Ween album.  They would stay plenty strange, but as they recruited a full band and began to write songs that were more conventionally musical and professionally produced they changed quite a bit.  In a lot of ways they probably changed for the better, but they never sounded like Pure Guava again.  So it remains an essential document of the early Ween sound. 

The Pod

8.5/10

  Okay I'm just going to come out and say that this was a damn hard album to get into.  The songs are dark, murky, and slow as hell and there are a lot of them on here.  Additionally the vocals have pretty much been messed with on every single track, often through tape manipulation.  They are either sped up, or as is often the case, slowed down.  Even the backing tracks seem to have been slowed down on many songs.  And the subject matter tends to be really weird.  There's a whole running theme throughout several of the songs of pork roll egg and cheese on a kaiser bun.  It's there to such an extent that this is almost a concept album about pork roll egg and cheese.  This could very well be the weirdest Ween album and that's saying something.  At the first listen it's pretty much impenetrable.  There is humor here but it's not quite as overtly goofy as it is on some of their other albums.  It definitely took me a little while to get to like this one.

  But the thing is once you do manage to wrap your brain around it there are a ton of really good songs on here.  It takes a little effort on the listener's part to get a handle on this thing, but there is a reward for putting the work in.  Looking at it now almost every song has something to recommend it, and many of them are flat out fantastic.  Plus it's more diverse than it initially seems.

  The popular theory is that Gene and Dean had a nasty case of mono and were also huffing scotch guard as they recorded this and that's why everything's so murky and weird.  The song Mononucleosis seems to lend credence to part of this as it would appear to be a somewhat factual account of one of the guys suffering from mono and the other guy offering his sympathy.  It's a nice showing of friendship and solidarity and it's actually got a hell of a melody to go along with it.  The scotch guard huffing part seems to have been a hoax, although it also seems to be reinforced by the cover, which is worth mentioning in and of itself.  It's quite simply the cover to Leonard Cohen's greatest hits album, with a picture of one of their friends with a scotch guard bong mask pasted right over Cohen's head.  It's not too subtle and it's not like they recreated the picture.  They used the original artwork and just plastered another head on top of it.  I read somewhere that Leonard Cohen was aware of it and thought it was funny, which is pretty cool.

  Some of the more accessible tunes on here include Pork Roll Egg and Cheese, which is probably the first song I was able to really embrace, because it's got an undeniable catchy pop melody, even as the subject matter remains weird and silly.

 Sorry Charlie was fairly easy to grasp as well.  It's a pretty straightforward song with some fairly relatable lyrics.  They seem to kind of muffle the sound on it a little though, so it seems really quiet at first.  It does increase a bit in volume as it goes along.  It might be the closest thing here to a normal song.

  There's also some good rockers on here in the form of Dr. Rock and Captain Fantasy.  Both of these tracks were staples of their live show late into their career and they lended themselves well to the live format.  But they're both pretty awesome as they exist here.  Sketches of Winkle actually rocks pretty hard, too.  Just thought I'd mention that.

  Elsewhere the tape manipulation-heavy Molly is one of the craziest songs I've ever heard, especially with its numerous pauses that trick you into thinking the song is over, before it kicks right back in again.  Pollo Asado is goofy as hell, but surprisingly listenable considering it consists of a couple of dudes who sound extremely stoned ordering Mexican food and screwing up the money transactions.  It's oddly funny especially since they make no attempt to change the voice of what is presumably several different customers.  I don't know if that's some sort of commentary on our consumer culture or if it's just drugged out ridiculousness.  Maybe a little of both.  It would seem like a track that would get old really quick, but I actually still enjoy listening to it.

  I honestly like almost every song on here, but I do want to give a shout out to Frank, Laura, Right to the Ways and the Rules of the World, Alone, and She Fucks Me.  Heck, I even dig the two Stallion songs, although they're pretty damn weird.

  At the end of the day I have to say this album kicks ass, but I sure as hell wouldn't recommend it to someone who's new to Ween.  I probably wouldn't play it around your mom either, unless she's a cool mom into weird music.  It's just too damn out there and I can see it being off putting for sure.  But once you kind of get what Ween's all about you're going to absolutely want to hear this one.  It's a really warped version of rock and pop music, and it's pretty unique.  It's definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I for one am glad these bizarre mutant songs exist.

God Ween Satan: The Oneness

9.0/10

  I just want to come out and admit from the getgo that Ween is one of my all time favorite bands.  I can't really be too objective about them because I just like them too damn much.  I genuinely think they're an awesome band, but I've found that outsiders to the cult of the Boognish don't always seem to see their amazingness quite as apparently as I do.  Maybe they're a little too weird, vulgar, or silly for some people.  But for me the fact remains that they are phenomenal songwriters, they're diverse as hell, Gener is an awesome singer, Deaner is one hell of a guitar player, they're experimental, they can pull off other band's styles better than the bands they're cribbing from, and they're pretty damn funny a lot of the time.  Plus they seem like they'd be a lot of fun to hang out with.  For the record I would say pretty much the same things about the Beatles.

  GodWeenSatan was their first "officially released" album.  They'd been making limited release cassette only albums for awhile before this, but those are mostly of interest to die-hard fans only.  In their early days they consisted of two friends who posed as fake brothers Gene and Dean Ween.  They recorded on 4-track cassettes at home presumably high on drugs and tended to utilize drum machines and other "fake" instrumentation.  They would recruit a full band later on, but Gene and Dean would always remain the heart of the band and some fans prefer these early days.  I, for one, am glad of the existence of early Ween.  It's much more "brown" to use the band's terminology.  I'm also glad their later more polished and accessible stuff exists, too.  

 A lot of what makes Ween "Ween" is already on display here.  There are goofy jokes, lots of different styles, some really awesome songs mixed with some weird little experiments, a fondness for messing with the vocals via effects or tape manipulation, and some killer guitar parts.  Also lots of screaming and curse words.  I can actually understand this album being a little off-putting to the uninitiated.  The humor's sometimes kind of crude and frat boy-ish and the screaming could rub you the wrong way if you're not in the mood for it.  But one of the things that's great about Ween on all of their albums is that once the shock wears off from the joke or the bad language, there are solid if not amazing songs underneath to be discovered.  It's one of the reasons why they are not the "joke band" they're often accused of being.  They're a completely serious band that happens to utilize a lot of goofy humor.  And for some reason humor in music tends to be marginalized and looked down upon.  You can take your "serious" self-pitying emo crybaby band.  I'll take Ween.

  They really don't hold anything back right from the start.  Things get kicked off in full obnoxious fashion with You Fucked Up, in which Gener screams the title along with numerous other vulgar insults.  Now this could easily come across as misogynistic, mean-spirited, annoying, or kind of dumb.  But the thing is Ween is taking the piss out of this kind of music.  There are bands out there who sing stuff like this for real and mean it.  Ween is poking fun of this kind of attitude while simultaneously rocking out with a kick-ass guitar part.

  There are several other songs that kind of fit into the same sort of vein as You Fucked Up, but there are also a couple of Prince odes, a super twee love song, some faux gospel music, some pretty acoustic music, a 19 second long dead-on impression of Bruce Springsteen, and some just plain weirdness.

  At 26 tracks (29 if you have the reissue) and over 70 minutes this is undoubtedly a lot to take in in one sitting.  Especially nowadays when everyone's attention spans are shorter.  I don't often sit down and listen to the whole thing anymore, but there are some major highlights here.  Birthday Boy is just a really phenomenal song.  The melody is fantastic in that sends-chills-down-your-spine kind of way and I dig the sound they get on the guitar and the choice to not use any kind of drums pays off as well.  Plus there are actual real-world relatable lyrics on display, something Gene in particular would explore more and to good effect as time went on.

 Another one I really like is Marble Tulip Juicy Tree.  I don't really have a clue what it's about, but it's catchy and has a genuinely awesome guitar solo.  I'm not even a big guitar solo type of guy but Deaner's just tearing it up here.  I even dig the weird spoken word bit at the end.

  I could probably go on a lot more about this album, and it's not even my favorite of theirs.  They were really young when they made it and it sounds like they had a super fun time.  The enthusiasm is infectious.  It's plenty weird, but it's not even close to the weirdest Ween album.  And if you don't like this one, you still shouldn't write them off because they sound completely different from album to album and even song to song.  They're Ween, damn it, and they rule.

Nanobots

7.0/10

  Thirty years into their career They Might Be Giants are still cranking out pretty solid albums.  Once again I haven't had the chance to live with this one as much as their earlier stuff, nor did it reach me at an age when I probably would have been most susceptible to its charms, so I can't help but rate it below their classic output.  Yet, I don't see anything to dislike here.

  Granted there's a tiny bit of TMBG by numbers feel to this.  They have the by now obligatory educational song in the form of Tesla and the series of short quirky songs can't help but feel like a slight retread of Fingertips.  But at this point in their career do we really want them to make radical departures in their sound or approach?  I don't really.  They have their formula down and it consists of ingredients that I enjoy.  Catchy songwriting and slightly off the wall subject matter are what I expect from this band, and once again, they deliver.

  I'm not sure if there's a major standout track here, but as usual they start off with a strong song in You're On Fire which features a melody that gets stuck in the old noggin.  The title track is also pretty catchy, which is something this band has always been good at.  It's nice to see that skill hasn't abandoned them this far into their lifespan as a band.

   Call You Mom is deliciously silly and weird with its line about dressing in a sailor suit and calling someone Mom because they remind the narrator of his mom.

  Black Ops has that familiar TMBG feel to it to such a degree that I was really surprised I hadn't heard it before.  I'm not saying it rips off any song in particular, just that I could have sworn it was already on one of their earlier albums.

  As I mentioned earlier, I don't know this album inside out like I do with their older ones.  I could see my rating going up or down a point with more familiarity, but probably not much more than that.  What I hear is another solid TMBG.  It's honestly surprisingly strong considering how long they've been at this.  I don't think they're done for yet.  They may not particularly innovate anything but if they continue to put albums out every few years as solid as this I'll keep listening.