There is a game I sometimes like to play. I ask myself: what if I remove this one song from a given album, will it improve the overall quality? In these dream scenarios, you get In The Court Of The Crimson King without "Moonchild". Led Zeppelin III without "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper". OK Computer minus "Fitter Happier". Would you really argue that those changes do not constitute an improvement? And is there an album in the world that would not get better with some minor pruning (for the record, yes, there is a handful of such albums)?
You might think Ween would be a great candidate for this game. You might think that each one of their albums features a failed experiment or a worthless dick joke that should never have seen the light of day. Oddly enough, Ween renders the game completely irrelevant. Take "Candi" out of Chocolate And Cheese, and some ridiculous yet vital balance is disrupted. Obviously, "Candi" is a silly joke, an uneventful mess, and yet it feels essential to the whole idea of this band. In a way, Ween's heart is spread evenly between "Candi" and, say, "A Tear For Eddie".
Their studio output started with the wild, hilarious screams of "You Fucked Up" and ended with the slick, smart "Your Party", and despite the maddening diversity and the large body or work in between, Ween have always felt like this one clever unit of a band, unbothered by register and willing to take any genre in the world and make it their own. In a live show, they would do "Mister Would You Please Help My Pony" and follow it up with the beautiful, earnest cover of "All Of My Love". There would be no contradiction in that.
Ween are mostly Gene and Dean Ween - the former is a vocalist of a million voices and the latter is one hell of a guitar player.
10. Pure Guava (1992)
This is an early one that features song titles like "Flies On My Dick" and "Touch My Tooter". It sounds that way, too, amateurish and deliberately dumb, besides being their first album for the major label (Elektra). A lot of joke songs and dicking around going on here, and don't even think of making it your first experience of Ween, but when you dig deeper, you will be rewarded with a few flashes of songwriting brilliance ("Little Birdy", "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)"). They simply couldn't help themselves.
Best song: "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)"
9. The Pod (1991)
This sounds a lot like Good Ween Satan: The Oneness, only darker and somehow... even murkier. The crazy thing is that underneath the overall silliness, there is a great band very much enjoying themselves. "Dr. Rock" rocks, "Pork Roll Egg & Cheese" has the sweetest melody in the world and every time Gene Ween screams "Sketches Of Winkle" I can't help thinking about Roger Daltry singing "Pictures Of Lily". I can't say I enjoy listening to The Pod (for the record, the cover is a parody of Leonard Cohen's 1975 compilation), but I find it genuinely unsettling and ever intriguing.
Best song: "Dr. Rock"
8. God Ween Satan: The Oneness (1990)
This album greets you with one hell of a warm welcome. After a brief announcement, a few seconds of silence and a brittle drum rhythm, you get Gene Ween shouting "You fucked up, you bitch, you really fucked up!" into your face. What follows is a bunch of one-minute outbursts (plus a couple of 9-minute jams) that tackle various genres and moods. The production values are low, but the fun and the energy levels more than make up for that. Also, there is a song titled "Mushroom Festival In Hell", and it probably sounds like one, too.
Best song: "You Fucked Up"
7. 12 Golden Country Greats (1996)
This was an interesting detour for the band. After Chocolate And Cheese (which many people consider their best album), the band moved to Nashville to record a country album. Of course, Ween being Ween, they recorded the absolutely greatest pure country album in the world. They brought the edge to it, a few new voices from Gene Ween and almost no dick jokes. Tight, catchy and a lot of fun - with a touch of real heartbreak in the closing ballad "Fluffy".
Best song: "Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain"
6. La Cucaracha (2007)
Back when this album was released, I was already a fan. I remember that for weeks and perhaps months they had been promising a really brown album, and this is what we got. La Cucaracha was, once again, a great exercise in taking a genre (pop punk, piano balladry, smooth jazz, soul, etc.) and writing a song in it. The results were a little patchier than expected ("Spirit Walker" is unforgivably bland, and I have little use for "Learnin' To Love" after 12 Golden Country Greats), and many fans were disappointed, but there is simply too much good material here to ignore. "Woman And Man" is a prog rock epic with some great guitar workout from Dean, "Object" is a lovely folksy ballad with ominous lyrics and "Your Party" creates the sort of atmosphere I could die in.
Best song: "Your Party"
5. Shinola: Vol.1 (2005)
Shinola: Vol.1 is a superior collection of rarities and outtakes. I'm sure they could release a much longer collection (it is actually criminal that the following volumes have never materialised), but the quality of songs here is up there with Ween's best albums. "Do You See Me" reminds me of prime Pink Floyd. "Monique The Freak" sounds better than anything I've ever heard from Prince. "Someday" would have graced a classic Ween album like Quebec. "Gabrielle", my favourite, is a pumping rocker with a terrific guitar solo and one of their catchiest choruses. Crazily but also typically, early outtakes sound better than the albums they were rejected from.
Best song: "Gabrielle"
4. Chocolate And Cheese (1994)
This is the first major album by the band. A sprawling 16-song album tackling almost every genre in existence and not once sounding faceless or derivative. Somehow, the genius of Ween has always been to own the genres they handle. So if they do sunshine pop ("Roses Are Free"), they do it with utter conviction. If they do a Funkadelic-styled jam ("A Tear For Eddie"), Dean Ween comes up with a Maggot Brain-sized guitar solo. And if it is a revenge tale that you want, done in a spaghetti-western style, then "Buenas Tardes Amigo" will squeeze the absolute maximum out of the obvious genre limitations. It is not a perfect album, but, again, remove the bizarre "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" from the track list, and the whole thing might crumble.
Best song: "What Deaner Was Talkin' About"
3. Quebec (2003)
Quebec is one of the band's more serious albums, with its 'brown' moments feeling a little uninspired - if not downright forced. Thus, whereas I can take on "So Many People In The Neighborhood" without any difficulty, I really have no use for "The Fucked Jam" in between the perfect pop of "I Don't Want It" and the moody guitar soundscape "Alcan Road". Still, like I said in the introduction, you can't be a Ween fan and expect them to forego "The Fucked Jam". Quebec is a brilliant album, with heady power pop ("Transdermal Celebration"), propulsive Motorhead-styled hard rock ("It's Gonna Be A Long Night") and the anthemic finale of such magnitude, you could be excused for thinking they may have been entirely serious there. Also, the music of "Zoloft" captures its title perfectly.
Best song: "The Argus"
2. White Pepper (2000)
What is this - a 12-song Ween album with little to no juvenalia and just great music? But that's what White Pepper really was. A play on the names of two legendary Beatles albums and melodies to match that. The diversity has not gone anywhere, of course, and the Caribbean-styled "Bananas And Blow" just about transcends everything you may have heard in that genre. "Stay Forever" is pop perfection. "Falling Out" is criminally catchy. And the gorgeous "Flutes Of Chi" has one of my favourite guitar solos ever. An absolute classic of an album.
Best song: "Flutes Of Chi"
1. The Mollusk (1997)
This was the album that made me a fan twenty or so years ago. Unlike most other Ween LPs, The Mollusk always felt to me like a collection of songs all serving one purpose. The Mollusk is not exactly a progressive rock album (there are hints, though), but it sustains the same mood - that of the deep green you can see on the cover - all the way through. Interestingly, they pull it off regardless of the fact that in the course of this album they do foul-mouthed sea shanties, underwater polka and, yes, the obligatory novelty number. A masterful album - so masterful, in fact, that you will be tricked into thinking adult contemporary is not the most worthless genre imaginable. But that is the power of Ween.
Best song: "Mutilated Lips"
