Ween – The Mollusk

June 24, 1997 / Elektra

10

(March 20, 2019)

It’s genius! Bravo! Bravo, I say! When I saw The Spongebob Squarepants Movie all those times all those years ago an album like The Mollusk was something I would never have even imagined existed, never mind was contributing its greatest song to the movie soundtrack, one that played on many a car ride over the course of my later childhood, yet it was there long before, just over a year younger than I am. I can’t be exactly sure when it was that I rediscovered Ocean Man, but I believe I may have been one of the first to jump on the meme bandwagon back when the song got its couple weeks of fame back at the start of 2015 or 16 (and, like all the best memes, was one made out of love that still lives on in some vestiges all these years later). But I did remember it offhand one day and looked up Ween, searching through the Wikipedia pages for their discography. Could be either, they happened relatively close together. Either way, when I discovered the full album of The Mollusk it seemed like something out of some acid trip/lucid dream hybrid, completely ridiculous and off-putting. The fuck is this children’s music bullshit? This isn’t “psychedelic,” Wikipedia, what’s wrong with you? But as my curiosity usually gets the better of me, soon enough I found myself putting the band’s entire discography onto my handy external hard drive. Just in case, y’know?

A bit under two years later I was listening to The Mollusk a couple times a month and I still hadn’t even started buying my own weed yet, and when that pivotal moment in my upperclassman college years the number of times I was listening to the album only increased. This album is drugs personified, man. Half of the album isn’t even terribly psychedelic, but you can practically feel it in your eardrums. I’m Dancing In the Show Tonight? Practically Yellow Submarine pt. 2 if the original had actually been a subtle metaphor for an acid trip and not actually written for a kids movie. Every classical instrument in the song is so clearly and purposefully MIDI that it’s not even funny, except it also is. The Mollusk is subtle at times, but as a whole it can’t be denied that it’s also one of the most flat-out hysterical albums made to this date, a maturation of the Ween that had already become apparent by 1997, but without any expense of the comedy element. In place of GodWeenSatan‘s slapstick-equivalent humor was a style of ingenious parody more in line with their previous effort 12 Golden Country Greats, albeit a great step above it in terms of songwriting (though Country Greats is by no means any less than a fine album). A full album parodying a single genre is pretty good, but why stop there? Why not fourteen songs, nearly every one unique in its style?

So you’ve got the weird little kids’ song with I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight. In terms of an opening track, this is probably the best way you can go; it’s simple, quirky, and short, and doesn’t even seem to be aquatic in any sense. As soon as it’s done, though, The Mollusk‘s delightful title track takes things in a much more acoustic direction, presenting a warm, fuzzy riff and hysterically off-beat, overly-complex and stylistic flute noodling in the background. We have another kids song, this one more like some distorted, seafaring version of Raffi, the wistful lyricism, laid-back strumming and everything, but with some delightfully out-of-place religious imagery as well. We get a real sense of the album’s aquatic nature with the song’s middle section, which includes some ridiculous philosophical telling of the mollusk, as well as some absolutely killer trumpet solos, which are so unabashedly MIDI’d and fake that it only makes them even better, rising upward in humanly-impossible scales before exploding into the quaint outro, ending the song with the flute still lingering in the air.

So what do we have after this? More children’s music? You could play this on family road trips! Polka Dot Tail generally doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other songs on the album, and I find this completely idiotic; this is THE first truly watery, seafaring song on the album, a cute, quasi-rustic waltz completed by the duo’s masterful vocal ability, foregoing the strangely English style of the title track in exchange for a deep croon, delivering all sorts of exquisite and faux-magical rhymes. It starts off fairly normal, but then, what’s this? Halfway or so through the song, out of nowhere, we’re greeted with a sudden, distorted, classically-psychedelic guitar solo. This is the fucking best kids’ album ever! Twice the song seems to end, and both times the guitar gets things going again, shredding yet melodic each time. After three songs, The Mollusk has finally touched on all of the musical areas most important to the album. Time to get creative.

W-what?? I said CREATIVE! This next song is just some shiny, fast-paced golden country! It’s not 1996 anymore! Johnny On the Spot is a pretty interesting turn from the rest of the album, and one of the only songs that’s not ocean-themed. At a pretty quick two minutes on the dot, it may not be the strongest song on the album, but it goes by in a breeze, and it also includes a pretty slick guitar solo, sounding like it was recorded through a tiny gap in the wall with its pinched-sounding squeak. That was pretty good, wasn’t it? Let’s have some more! After this brief diddy we’re greeted with the gentle swell of cymbals that welcomes in Mutilated Lips, the album’s second major player after the title track and its first through-and-through psychedelic affair. The Weens’ voices are distorted and morphed into those of strange, aquatic characters, while an acoustic guitar strums much more subtly and morosely than with its previous appearance. Managing to sound dark while still maintaining a classically-wry atmosphere can’t be an easy trick, yet Ween just make it seem like another day at the office, albeit a particularly productive one in this sense. That guitar solo just sells it, though. Quiet and sad, yet with some fantastic use of glissandi, short and sweet, its the most musically-refined moment on the album yet, and given the ideas we’ve heard so impeccably put together so far, that’s really saying something.

Now, if you made the same mistake I first did and thought that this album might be something suitable to play around kids, The Blarney Stone is where you start to really regret your decisions. After the quiet psych-ballad of Mutilated Lips, The Blarney Stone fades in with the romping of a room full of drunken, rowdy sailors, with one grizzled-sounding mutt breaking in with an acoustic and starting an unkempt, vulgar Scottish ballad. I personally find it to be one of my favorites off of the album; it actually SOUNDS like a traditional drinking song, almost. There’s scarcely a serious thing about drinking songs and sea shanties; their sole purpose is to give a hardworking ship crew something to revel and bond over, so even in the context of a parody album, how could you already make something like this even more aloof and intoxicating? The bagpipe solos definitely help a bit, as does the signature sing-along mood of the song as a whole. The song’s not so much a parody as an emulation, and a brilliant one at that. Endless hours, or at least minutes, of fun.

After this we’ve got two more psychedelic numbers, the faux-love ballad It’s Gonna Be (Alright) and the more intense, gritty The Golden Eel. The former resembles a calmer, more melancholic Mutilated Lips, complete with the gentle, fluctuating guitar and unorthodox keyboards, complete with dramatic eruptions at each chorus and a compact, metallic solo right in the middle that flows and expands into the song’s final climactic moment. It’s Gonna Be (Alright) is a more blatantly parodical track, a melo- and over-dramatic, yet nevertheless lush and melodic love ballad that you can’t help but feel that, despite its aloofness, is at least somewhat truly meant.

Then we have Cold Blows the Wind, and that‘s where things get really interesting. Going out of context for a little bit, there’s a popular old episode of Spongebob Squarepants, the one where Spongebob’s putting off his essay through various methods. At one point he calls Patrick, that lovable old dumbass, and tries in vain to chat with him until, for the first time ever, Patrick gets real serious: “Spongebob, you and I both know that you’re just using me as a distraction so you don’t have to write your essay.” I mean what the fuck is that? It turns out to just be a dream sequence, but watching that episode as a kid, I and many others got fucked up for just the tiniest little bit when that bit happened. Back to the album. Cold Blows the Wind is an interpretation of an old English poem/folk song (by old I mean 1860s), and for just under five minutes in the latter half of The Mollusk Ween get serious. The solo acoustic guitar strums coldly and in solitary, and even later as the Weens add more distortion and electronic effects, it never quite seems humorous like the other songs do. By the time it’s done, we as the listeners feel cold ourselves. It’s somewhat of an oddity in the band’s pre-Quebec material, and in the presence of the rest of the songs on the album it makes itself stand out as one of the most creative songs present.

After this dark and serious affair we have an interlude of sorts to bring us back into the swing of things. After the ridiculous instrumental Pink Eye (On My Leg), complete with dog barks and sampled groans, we finally arrive at Waving My Dick in the Wind, the effective answer to I’ll Be Your Jonny on the Spot so much earlier on. It’s got a similar form, high-speed and very country-esque, and while it may not be as profound or unique as the rest of the album, it’s still a very groovable tune that’s some much-needed simplicity this far along. After this, though, we have Buckingham Green, which is potentially the most flat-out hysterical song on the album. Every bit of it is feigned seriousness and bombast, starting with a tense guitar riff and some weird semi-religious lyrical matter, before Ween goes out with guns blazing: out of nowhere is the most kick-ass, shredding, and delightfully overdone guitar solo yet, a prominent reminder of the extreme talent behind the humor that makes Ween possible, and then we’re treated to some Her-Royal-Majesty, bad 1980s prog-inspired strings hammering out a staccato passage with completely unnecessary, yet also chuckle-inducing snare and timpani. It’s the most purposefully try-hard song on the album, and every bit of effort put into it pays off completely. The album could in all seriousness end right there, but the biggest trick Ween has up their sleeve comes up next.

So. Ocean Man. Is it possible to actually make the perfect song? Maybe, maybe not, but even if it isn’t, the penultimate track on The Mollusk is one of the closest songs to perfection I’ve heard yet. Many unaware listeners who have stumbled upon this album will remember it from its iconic appearance in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, and even without those more homely memories to connect it to, Ocean Man is one fucking sublime and groovy song. Mandolin riffs, hysterically-distorted vocals, and the most psychedelic guitar solo since Mutilated Lips, it’s just over two minutes of the most jam-able, insanely enjoyable rock music of the century as far as I’m concerned. In all honesty I never get tired of it. It’s simply too engrossing; a hundred listens later and as soon as the drum fill at the start fills your ears you’ll still be grooving along with it, if not singing along as well. It’s effectively the all-encompassing point of the album; the very basis of The Mollusk is stripped down and turned into its most recognizable – and greatest – number. It’s more or less the epilogue.

If Ocean Man is the epilogue, then She Wanted to Leave is the end credits. An unabashedly Scottish-sounding acoustic sea shanty, it flows smooth and sweet until a final synthesized gong hit closes the album… or so it seems. On a strange and somewhat nostalgic note, we’re at last treated to the sound of crashing waves on some distant shore, and the instrumentals from I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight, the opening that seems like an entire road trip behind us, slowed down to a grinding pace and placed in the very background, the ambiance that the waves themselves may have been meant as, but the sounds of nature are so much more engrossing, and are still left lingering after the music fades out. A rather lonely, yet also incredibly satisfying, way to finish the album.

In another RYM review for this album I’ve seen describing a Ween album to a non-listener compared to describing a Magic Eye picture to someone with their eyes closed, and I couldn’t agree with that sentiment more. I’ve done my best to run through the bigger picture in addition to the little quirks and touches that make The Mollusk such an absolute masterpiece, but like with any masterpiece, the true result requires listening, taking risks, and spending time with it. It’s a very bizarre and almost off-putting (at least at times) first listen, but the more one immerses themselves within the album, the better it becomes with each progressive listen.

Comedy rock has rarely been a genre that’s been deemed worthy of acclaim, but while The Mollusk is just that at its core, it’s also much more than that. There’s art rock, psychedelic rock, and a dozen little elements of genres from all over the place, both in time and in the confines of music itself. No song on the album could be considered a dud or even just a comedy song; The Mollusk is comedy made through serious and hard work, only assisted by the extraordinary minds of the Weens themselves. A magnificent and practically required listen, full of humor, drama, melody, and loads of fun, over two decades of time to breathe has made it one of the staples of 90s psychedelia. A loopy, infectious trip that’s perfect at any time, with any “outside help.” Presumably. I wouldn’t know.