The Mollusk

Sound DNA

• Rock
• Psych Rock

• warm
• playful
• nocturnal

About

A direct influence on a nascent little show called <i>SpongeBob SquarePants</i>, Ween’s <i>The Mollusk</i> is a brilliant collection of nautical nonsense. Released in 1997, the duo’s sixth album cruises through the murky, the absurd, and the heartfelt: From the Mariana Trench ickiness of its Storm Thorgerson cover art to its dark-hued fantasias of whales, eels, and expanding tentacles, <i>The Mollusk</i> is a prog-rock-slash-alt-psych concept album that brings the band’s quirky vocal effects and bizarro guitar heroics to the bottom of the sea. And though the restless, fearless Ween is still cycling through genres with abandon, the maritime theme in its lyrical content and woozy Moog synthesizer textures make <i>The Mollusk</i> the most cohesive album of the band’s career. The members of Ween holed up in a rented beach house at the Jersey Shore during the rainy off-season, so that they could wander along the beach and fish in the waves while working on music. They pulled the lyrics to “Cold Blows the Wind” from a book of traditional British Isles folk songs, and soon wrote their own accompanying music; the finished tune’s cloudy, sinister mood became a jumping-off point for the entire record. The pastoral folk of “The Mollusk”; the broken children’s music of “Polka Dot Tail”; the wriggling rock of “The Golden Eel”—they all find Ween singing of sea life while accompanied by bubbly effects. But while much of <i>The Mollusk</i> sounds like a 1970s folk-prog band recording inside a submarine, Ween still swerves into electro-punk (“I’ll Be Your Johnny on the Spot”), a breakup ballad (“It’s Gonna Be (Alright)”), and sideways country (“Waving My Dick in the Wind”). <i>The Mollusk</i> wasn’t a commercial success upon release, but it’s beloved by fans, including singer and guitarist Kurt Vile, who once described “Mutilated Lips” as his “favorite song maybe ever.” And the album’s legacy would extend well into the 2000s: The two-minute-long “Ocean Man”—which didn’t even merit a music video upon the album’s release—was later used in 2004’s <i>The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie</i>, and soon became a viral meme.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits