If you were to go on Spotify and search up Ween’s The Mollusk, you’ll see that ‘Polka Dot Tail’ is the least played track out of the album’s first seven songs. Just about though, only 124 less than the next track and that one is the vaudeville/showtime-esque opening number. Actually, that’s at the time that this post is being written. That may well have changed since then. Even so, I feel like the least-played scenario has been the case for this song for quite a while. Well, I guess one song has to be listened to the least. But if it were up to me, the track would much, much higher. It’s been one of my favourite songs from that album ever since listening to it for that first time in 2014.

The fluttering keyboard from the preceding title track has just about finished fading away into the distant silence before the disorienting synths of ‘Polka’ fill the soundscape once more. The track is something of a slow, psychedelic waltz. Waltzes are usually in 3/4 time, right? On every one count is a huge kick drum whose bass hits with a massive force, while an acoustic guitar lays out the chord progression on the left channel and a synthesizer playing the root notes in the right. A double-tracked Gene Ween harmonises with himself, his voice sounding a little pitched-down due to the process of recording at a faster pace and slowing the tape down, something which was well-known feature in a lot of Ween songs. And what he sings about, whales with polka dot tails, taking flans and squishing them in hands and the rhyme schemes he adopts are very much based on the children’s song ‘Down by the Bay’. In fact, here’s a performance of that particular song by children’s music singer Raffi in which he says that lyric outright.

At points after Gene Ween sings “Tell me it ain’t so”, the synths drone on, building tension, leaving the listener to wonder what turn this track might just take next. At one of these moments Gene says ‘Billy’, which came across as random to me, as it probably would to any listener, when I first heard it. Once I found out that the bending, echoing guitar solo that follows that utterance was played by Bill Fowler, a good friend of the band’s, then it made a lot more sense. And I guess the ‘help me’ that’s said before the final solo is a call to Fowler to bring things home. I really enjoy this track. It’s woozy, pushes you from side to side. Like I said earlier, the bass kicks have an almighty weight behind them and hit real hard each time they arrive. With all the talk about whales and imagery of puppies flying and shrinking like ice cubes in the sink, the musical/lyrical combination establishes a psychedelic energy to the proceedings while also reinforcing the nautical theme that runs throughout the album. If ‘The Mollusk was the warm inviting moment, ‘Polka Dot Tail’ is the moment where the doors open and you begin to realise the party might just be a bit weirder than you thought it would be.