Tag Archives: the mollusk

#1191: Ween – She Wanted to Leave

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Before I properly dove into the world of Ween in the autumn of 2015, The Mollusk was the first album I listened to by the band a year and a bit earlier. Like many others out there, I heard ‘Ocean Man’ at the end of the SpongeBob movie, liked it and added it to the old iTunes library. (I’d already known ‘Daisies’, ‘Freedom of ’76’ and ‘Loop de Loop’ by seeing them at various points on the TV, which left me confused because they all didn’t sound they were made by the same people. But this is way besides the point.) ‘Ocean Man’ was the only Ween song sitting in that library for a while. So one day when I was chilling in my uni room, I thought “Why not?” and listened to the record in its entirety. Probably one of the best decisions I’ve made in this lifetime. I was 18 by the time this was going on, but it felt like the album should have been a longtime favourite of mine by that point. Was definitely a “Where has this been all my life?” kind of thing.

How suitable that the last song on The Mollusk is the final one from the album I’ll be talking about on here. There’s not a lot of love for ‘She Wanted to Leave’ that I’ve seen online. I’ve read other people saying that the album should have ended with ‘Ocean Man’, which I don’t understand. I like the song myself, but as an album closer? I think I’d really be wanting more. And ‘She Wanted…’ brings it all home with a sort of unexpected emotional ending. It’s a breakup song, “straight Richard Thompson” according to Dean Ween, but instead of the usual guy-girl clichés, Gene Ween sings from the perspective of a man who’s completely left out to dry and lost for words after their lady’s been wooed away by a bunch of pirates. Left broken by the whole ordeal, he goes straight to the booze and wallows in his misery. Quite the sad way to end what is an incredibly fun album. In fact, the last words “For I’m not the man I used to be/And now I’m one of them” left such a mark initially that the sentiment inspired me to make a post about the best ending lines on an album.

So you’ll notice the song really ends about 2-and-a-half minutes into the runtime. Leaves you wondering, “Well, what else is there?” And a few moments later, these whooshing synths come in – I guess meaning to sound like these ominous breezes in the middle of the quiet ocean – before a familiar melody begins to play. It’s only a slowed down reprise of ‘I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight’, the song that started the whole record off and, by that point, in the closing moments seems so long ago. The little hidden touch puts a feather in the cap of the whole package. This is the way that the album should close out, and it was always meant to be. Clicking on the ‘the mollusk’ tag below will take you to the other songs from the album I’ve written posts for. And if I’d known it when I was doing the ‘B’ section, ‘The Blarney Stone’ and ‘Buckingham Green’ would have had their own articles too. It’s just how these things go sometimes.

#1050: Ween – Polka Dot Tail

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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.

#964: Ween – Ocean Man

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Set up in a rented beach house on the shore of New Jersey, Gene and Dean Ween were overcome with inspiration. Their surroundings were an influence on many of the songs that would end up on The Mollusk and many others that were left on the cutting room floor. ‘Ocean Man’ provides a clear example. That song is from the point of view of a person who wants to know more about the titular character, hoping to become their friend and be taken to the strange places this character goes. It’s basically Ween’s ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’. Gene Ween had a mandolin and was always playing around with it, the chords came about, the lyrics were written quickly and everything seemed to fall into place. That’s according to Dean Ween himself in a 20th anniversary retrospective of the album. A great read, would recommend. Once finished, it was put in the penultimate slot on the record. The place that, from what I’ve gathered, is usually where artists put the songs that are good, but don’t really amount to much when it comes to album flow. Am I wrong in saying that? I feel like there’s some unspoken truth about it.

Anyway, I don’t think the duo could have imagined how much of an impact the song would have on generations to come upon its inclusion in the very last scene of the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in 2004. SpongeBob becomes the manager of the Krusty Krab, spoilers, and as the ‘camera’ freezes while he delivers the last line of the film, the opening drum roll to ‘Ocean Man’ cuts in and the credits start to roll. Now, Ween were no strangers to SpongeBob. They had provided the song ‘Loop de Loop’ for the cartoon for an episode where SpongeBob doesn’t want to tell anyone that he doesn’t know how to tie his shoes. But as a track from the album that actually influenced the creation of that series, ‘Ocean Man’ acts as the perfect way to bring it all full circle in what was originally meant to be the cartoon’s grand finale.

It’s where I heard the track for the first time, albeit a few good years later when the film was showing on TV because I never saw it at the cinema when it initially came out. What drew me to the track immediately were the exaggerated vocals. Knowing Ween now, it’s not that much of a surprise. It’s just standard practice that they change the pitch or speed of their songs when mixing in order get those effects on their vocals. But being 13/14 or however old I was when I saw that film the first time, it was definitely odd yet strangely appealing. I downloaded that track, and for years it was the only Ween song I had in my library. Took a while, but now I have practically all their albums in there. It takes a seed to make a tree.

#883: Ween – Mutilated Lips

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Many would consider ‘Mutilated Lips’ to be a clear highlight from The Mollusk. For the longest time though, I didn’t. When I heard the album the first time in 2014, it was obvious that it was a record like no other. The tracks were strange, the cover surreal… The Mollusk is a weird package, but the music was phenomenal. For the longest time, ‘Lips’ stuck out to me as the ‘weird’ song that was made for the point of being weird. The backward reverb before each line, the alternate tuning, the high-pitched voice during the ever-going sentence that makes up the song’s chorus. It all just gave an impression to me of “Yep, this is the weird one.”

So I didn’t care for it for a few years. I had my choice cuts from the album set in stone. But then I watched the band’s 2003 Live in Chicago DVD on YouTube where they performed the song, and it sort of clicked from that. There’s a skinny, potentially strung out Gene Ween on the acoustic guitar, eyes bulging out of his skull, changing the pitch of his voice automatically whenever the song requires it… he’s just owns his performance. And here the song is performed in a different key which I think suited it much better. But those aforementioned things that put me off the track up to that point, I suddenly rated quite highly. Except that backwards echo thing, that doesn’t happen in the live take. But hearing that performance made me listen to the album version with open ears. It’s been an favourite in my music library ever since.

As arguably the strangest song on the album, you’d think it wouldn’t be the track that record labels would want the people to hear when they find out a new Ween album was arriving. Well, Elektra Records did, and selected the track to be the first single released from The Mollusk, much to Gene and Dean Ween’s confusion. I maybe would have chosen the album’s title track, but I’m not a label rep, so what would I know? Below is that Live in Chicago performance, just so you don’t have to open another tab and search for it yourself.

#849: Ween – The Mollusk

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Beautiful, beautiful stuff right here. ‘The Mollusk’ is the title track from the 1997 album by Ween, and after intro track ‘I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight’ is where the records themes of the sea and other things related to it truly begins. Mollusks aren’t the nicest creatures to look at. Mollusks are things like, snails, squids, octopuses. Things you usually go ‘ew’ or ‘whoa, cool’ at. Quite polarizing emotions. But Ween’s dedication to these animals make them sound like some of the most out there, mystical creatures to exist.

It starts straight away with the hypnotizing acoustic riff that is backed by that bubbling, whistling keyboard note that fritters and echoes into the distance. I don’t know where else in you could be placed in your mind other than a beach next to a calming wave within those opening seconds. The instrumental properly sets this calming momentum that lulls you into the track’s opening line, one where Gene Ween asks a little boy what he has and in response the backing vocals as the boy answer “Kind sir, it’s a mollusk I’ve found”. The whole song follows this sort of call and response tactic in the verses, they work well. And then they come together during the chorus to I guess symbolize this new interest in this mollusk that this man and the boy share. Describing it, it does sound quite strange. But listening to it really takes you to another place.

One question that’s usually asked about this song arises from its closing lyrics. Gene Ween proclaims to the listener that ‘there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand’. Yet people are confused as he seems to list only one of those. I do think he lists them in plain sight. The waking of all creatures etc etc., one faint glance back into the sea, and its wandering eye. It’s obvious, isn’t it? It did take me a while to figure out too, gotta say. Oh, yeah, there’s also an episode of SpongeBob where he literally says “Mind your wandering eye, you little mollusk”. Reference to this song. It’s not breaking news.