The Mollusk

As every Ween record The Mollusk is a total chaos of styles, ideas and brown humor. It starts with the incredibly funny "I'm Dancing in the Show Tonight" with the subject stating to have no stage fright at all. "The Mollusk", "Mutilated Lips", "Buckingham Green" and "Ocean Man" are psychedelic songs with beautiful melodies. "I'll Be Your Jonny on the Spot" is one of the heavier songs and "Waving My Dick in the Wind" is as stupid as Ween can get. Often the craziness obscures the great songwriting and also fabulous guitar play on this album. Don't take it all so serious and take a bit of this delicious and fulfilling treat.

A certified classic. While I think "Quebec" is their best work, this is just such an insanely comforting album. Immediately made my day better just from seeing the album cover. Definitely should have been on the list. If not for the fantastic music, then surely for directly inspiring Spongebob. Easy 5/5.

Hands down Ween's best album. Should be on the official list in place of Chocolate and Cheese.

Quite fun! Lots of creativity on display. Definitely purely worth it!

A weird album by a weird band made up of weird guys, with weird songs done weirdly. In a good way!

This is one chaotic mix of genres, that somehow work quite well

Rock experimental. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

As in all things Ween, *The Mollusk* starts with a joke, the novelty cut "I'm Dancing In The Show Tonight". From the music hall ambience of that strange opener, ripe with saloon piano, a woods section and cartoonish high-pitched vocals, and given the album's title and artwork, you brace yourself for a bizarre, very tongue-in-cheek musical with a nautical theme, and not much else. Which *The Mollusk* also is, of course, lol. But at the same time, it's way more than just *that*. Enter the second cut and title-track, very pretty with its bubbly synth hook, but also oddly emotional -- even if the emotions are still somewhat unstated -- and here you are already sensing that as much this album hides its true ambitions close to the chest, they are already showing somehow. Likewise, "Polka Dot Tail" sounds like another weird ditty at first, yet some genuine sense of anxiety seeps in at the end. "I'll Be Your Jonny on the Spot" is then a fun electro-punk romp (should I *really* mention each and every 180-degree stylistic turn in a Ween album???) leading to the prog-rock tones of the terrific "Mutilated Lips", graced with gansgta rap synth whistles, wonderful guitar harmonies and yet another high-pitched vocal part, this time unsettling with its graphic obsession with those titular lips. Prog rock indeed, but mostly progressing further towards surreal madness. Those prog-rock elements are incidentally what gives a surprising cohesiveness to the project, by the way -- contaminating all the other genres tackled in the tracklist, even those not closely related to it. And they also give a confessional aura of sorts to what might secretly be a break-up album in the guise of a musical about the sea -- a maritime musical which half of the lyrics soon forget anyway, suggesting the impressions a rather schizoid mind. It's as if the whole thing was experienced by a lovelorn character slowly turning crazy and hallucinating all sorts of things in his mind's eye. After the offensive sea shanty "The Blarney Stone", "It's Gonna Be (Alright)" is a surprisingly forthcoming ballad about letting your loved one go, which underlines the confessional undertones sensed before. Like the tides, the sea then returns with the ominous ternary rhythms of "The Golden Eel", once again "progressive" but here in a very sly fashion. Traditional song "Cold Blows the Wind" follows -- it seems to take its gothic program and supernatural yarn about love being stronger than death quite seriously, and you may think that Dean and Gene Ween are fully grown-ups by that point. Have the Ween brothers here turned into earnest artists, not indulging in self-irony anymore? Of course, that's exactly the moment when they pull the rug from under your feet, with the 100% absurd instrumental "Pink Eye (On My Leg)" and the cowpunk track "Waving My Dick in the Wind" (still surreptitiously displaying whiffs of a painful break-up, in spite of its jokey shenanigans). Back to *Chocolate And Cheese* turf, are we? Well, not really. This was just a red herring for the first fans -- unless it was a gold nugget for them. Whatever the case is about that digression, the next cut, the magical "Buckingham Green", suddenly feels so epic and sophisticated (in an admittedly very Ween fashion), you could almost think it's a tribute to Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. Maybe it actually is. When you listen to its strings-laden conclusion you can actually bet it is. Right? And then, out of nowhere, "Ocean Man" surges from the very contradictory waves made by the duo so far. Instantly catchy. Lovely, lively and enticing. Simply iconic. Only two minutes and one of the best pop-rock songs of all time. For real. I'm dead serious here. Equally short ballad "She Wanted to Leave" can then conclude the proceedings, confirming that the whole thing is, at its core, a prog-rock break-up album (read the title of the song again). Right after the track ends, you have a novelty coda circling back towards the tones of the opener, but this one despondent and forlorn, with menacing sounds of wind wooshing in the background like in a Fellini film. Unless the record makes a final stop in David Lynch's liminal world... It's a glimpse inside the tormented soul of someone but *who*? And that last picture isn't really pretty, as fun as what we've heard before was. True works of art can be as exciting and disturbing. And there's certainly a bit of that in *The Mollusk*, that one album where Ween finally abandoned most of their initial college humour (in spite of one or two relapses) and embraced a far more promising artistry, filled with mystery and sudden poetic turns -- and this without ever betraying the crazy attitude that has been part of their DNA from the start. Doing so, they ended up influencing plenty of current rock artists, like Kurt Vile or Geese's Cameron Winter, both absolute fans of this album (and the rest of the band's discography). When you listen to Geese today, a bankable and trendy band for sure, you really feel like their own fantasy and lack of boundaries owes something to the 'Ween brothers'. At the time of *Chocolate And Cheese* (decidedly a poor choice for the original list, contrary to *Quebec*), no one in their right mind would have predicted such an outcome. But by 1997 and *The Mollusk*, the more perceptive ears of the late nineties may have already sensed what would happen long term (I certainly didn't at the time, ha ha!). This record is part of the "canon" now, simply put. It challenges the very concepts of fun and seriousness, straddles the line between parody and earnestness, sounds in turns elated or sinister... It seems to tell several stories at the same time, only for you to realize at the last minute that there really was only *one* story. Treacherous like the sea, but also offering an ocean of possibilities and interpretations, rock music doesn't get more unpredictable than this. 4.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 5 9.5/10 for more general purposes (5 for the production values and overall musicianship + 4.5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 113 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 118 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 262 ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown

Strangely kind of a lowkey Ween release. Of course there’s a unique atmosphere inherent to most Ween songs, but this time it came off as especially distant. Still, very good album

I think this is my favorite Ween album. I return to it a lot. I didn't even need to listen to it today, per se. I have basically the whole thing memorized. But I love it so much I was happy for the excuse to put it on.

Yllättävän toimiva kokeilulevy!

I've heard Ocean Man many times, but never the full album before. I can see the appeal, but Ocean Man is the best track by a mile.

Ween is so fing weird man

Interesting and odd at times, probably deserves to be on the list for being so out there.

Thought this had been here already actually

Definitely the best of the 3 Ween albums submitted. If you like this, more power to you. I thought it was just okay. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No

Per usual, Ween provides a trippy rock experience here with their standard blend of solid rock chops and tinge of weirdness. This LP feels a bit more scattershot even by the band's loose standards, though, and feels more like a grab-bag of styles and moods rather than a cohesive album. Gets a bump based solely on the pure joy of 'Ocean Man,' not a bad album at all, just more disjointed than I would prefer.

I was an early adopter on Ween (pre-Guava), though as so often the case only by riding the coattails of my brother's superior awareness. So I'm a partisan. Still I think they're overrepresented on this list at this point. As well, I do feel like the aggressive whimsy loses some of its shine when delivered on a well-finded, full studio package. This is still good.

Weirdo rock is weird

Fine I guess

Ween aren't for me, so neither is The Mollusk, though I did enjoy The Blarney Stone enough for it to get a 2/5.

Never been a fan of Ween. Just never got them and I don't find the mix they manage in this record to be of particular interest to me.

Much better than the previous "Chocolate & Cheese"? Yes. Is it worth it to listen before dying? Not sure, but I'm betting on the "No" side this time. Maybe in another mood I could rate it better, mainly due to the variety of styles that they are able to play