quebec (2003), by Ween.
Who are Ween? From Wikipedia:
The name Ween was a word made up by the duo, a combination of the words wuss and penis.
and;
SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg had contacted Ween and told them that The Mollusk was one of the show’s biggest inspirations.
Sometimes you just know, you know?
I didn’t know anything about Ween before I found this album, and don’t ask where I got it from. To my knowledge, I had only encountered Ween once before when one of my Gremlins (re: students) made/showed/inflicted a TikTok on me that used “Ocean Man”,1 to which, teenage memes aside, I highly recommend listening to if you haven’t.
As part of writing this I did some research, by which I mean I read the Wikipedia page, but that’s far more than I normally do. One of my goals in this attempt is to expand the care and attention I spend on what I’m listening to. Thanks to having an Apple Music subscription, the way I find music these days is to stick a metaphorical cup out the window during a downpour and then drink whatever it catches. Sure it’s all water, isn’t it? And while this lets me have a library with music as diverse as Tuvan throat-singing rubbing shoulders with the musical equivalent of waking up after a three-day bender, it means that intentionality is lost in the mix. I’ll just listen to whatever comes, and if I like it or not, does it really matter?
I’ve often heard the current iteration of the Internet described as a “fire hose”, and musical subscription services are a prime example of that. I have all the water I could ever want, but it’s a pretty bad way to fill your cup. It didn’t use to be like that (and what about the Internet isn’t different and worse than it used to be?), hence me writing a blog in the year of our Lord 2024, and while I don’t want to stand in the face of progress, maybe some of the “advances” we’ve made come with costs, costs I am less and less willing to pay.
I have fond memories of the work required to find, download, edit, and burn CDs, and though that was so much more work, it made me think like a collector, like a connoisseur, if you’ll forgive me describing my 12 year-old self as a connoisseur, but in the end it made me actually listen to the music I was collecting. Currently, I have hundreds of albums in my library that I’m sure I’ll listen to one day, as opposed to the dozens of albums I had as a kid but that I actually listened to.
Wisdom of the youth that weren’t; I adored finding new and stranger music as the days went on, and devoured queer things voraciously. Neural nostalgia notwithstanding, I had no qualms with music of all types, so it’s certainly not any sort of aversion to challenge that puts me off. Nowadays…I just don’t listen to much, and I don’t think that’s just because I’m older, I think that’s because the structure of our music-listening systems creates that divide. I have no investment in what I’m listening to, so I have no excitement, no engagement, and no desire to listen to more. Why would I?
So to fix it, I’m bridging it with my thoughts after the fact, to try and sort my own feelings and observations and opinions, but also to contribute a little bit to expanding the horizons of music, to make a little map you can point to and say “hey, check that place out if you want!”.
All that to say: quebec is a pretty good album!
Why did I like it:
Ween is a strange band, with all the positives and negatives that connotes. You have plain old weirdness in the songs “So Many People In The Neighbourhood” and “The F****d Jam”, Yellow Submarine-esque whimsy in “Hey There Fancypants”, and chill, low-fi goodness in “Tried and True”, all of which mean that this is an album where prior songs do not reflect what the rest of the album will be like. You are rightly warned that this album is a case of “buyer beware”.
That means that the work of “Transdermal Celebration” is so important then. Coming in at the third song of fifteen, it’s a beautiful, sweet, sad, catchy, and emotive rock jam. I’m tempted to use the word “ballad” and wouldn’t argue with you if you did, and it coming when it does gives you the ground beneath your feet to keep listening. If the punky opener “It’s Gonna Be a Long Night” rolls off your back (which it shouldn’t! It’s fun!), and “Zoloft” doesn’t work for you2, then “Transdermal” hits like a truck full of C-4. I’ve listened to it maybe a dozen times in the past day, mostly while trying to rock the Little Monster to sleep, and it hits just as hard every time.3
“Transdermal” gives you confidence in Ween, a confidence that lets you re-evaluate the weird and enjoy what they’re doing. I don’t think there’s much point in thinking about what they’re trying to do. Just listen to it, and it works or it doesn’t, and on the whole, I think it does. There’s ups and downs, of course, but the plaintive wail that is the closing song, “If You Could Save Yourself (You’d Save Us All)”, so effectively plucks at the heartstrings you’re reminded that, yes, Ween is weird and strange, but they also know what they’re doing, they can make good music, and quebec is a good album.
As part of my thinking, I read an old review from a music magazine (which, because I’m about to badmouth it, I won’t name; find it yourself if you want) and not only was it written with poorly-aged early-Millennium snark, I think it missed the point entirely. There’s one small section I’ll quote:
[…] nothing I say makes any difference. It’s Ween. Their fans adore them, and the rest of you don’t care.
Which I find this impossible to read as anything other than “don’t bother trying something new”. As that is anathema to EE and my stated mission of sticking fingers in eyes,4 I suggest you ignore that advice and check them out. It just might make a difference.
- Hilariously, The Mollusk is described as “Pop” by Apple Music. The reader is left to laugh at that themselves. ↩︎
- It didn’t for me. I think it’s a bad song put in a bad place on the album; one of those rare pieces of music where I think I’d rather not have heard it. ↩︎
- But not “rock” him to sleep; I wear headphones. ↩︎
- Including my own, at times. ↩︎
Electronic Ephemera 