Ween: The Mollusk : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Ween may be weird, but they're rarely weird in the same way twice. Since toddling out of New Hope, Pa., in 1990, armed with a four-track recorder, a hardy DIY work ethic and a bizarre debut album called God Ween Satan – the Oneness, this two-man band has traversed an eclectic range of styles and genres. Most recently, it has experimented with funk, sort of (1994's Chocolate and Cheese), and trampled Nashville into the ground (last year's 12 Golden Country Greats).

Ween's sixth album finds faux brothers Gene and Dean Ween (vocalists and guitarists Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo) turning their talent for mimicry toward a host of musical conceits. Stuffed with an inventive assemblage of analog keyboards, found sounds and brogue-encrusted folk songs, The Mollusk is a satirical (and curiously subtle) pastiche of the current musical landscape. Not even the tongue-in-cheek trippiness that Ween themselves perfected on albums such as 1991's The Pod is spared: "Polka Dot Tail" offers – what else? – a polka tweaked to absurd psychedelic extremes by phase-shifting guitars and woozy, reverberating vocal effects. The album's funniest track, "Mutilated Lips," takes the band's penchant for eccentric lyrics right over the top as rambling, surrealistic verses alternate with choruses of stoned, stream-of-consciousness babble ("Mutilated lips/Give a kiss/On the wrist/Of the wormlike tips/Of tentacles expanding"). It's groovy enough to give Gibby Haynes a wicked flashback.

In the end, The Mollusk comes off sounding both anachronistic (will these guys ever move beyond their nerdy jester shtick?) and – since genre tripping has become a pop staple – cunningly contemporary. If Ween's sense of self-irony survives the electronic music craze, there's likely a wonderfully wack techno album on the horizon.