The comedian Stewart Lee does a bit where he compares how easy it is for youngsters to get into BDSM now, compared to what their grandparents had to go through. He describes said grandparents sneaking onto farms, stealing empty potato sacks, in order to manufacture gimp masks for themselves. Nowadays, he sneers—half-joking, half-serious—BDSM is an "identity" that consists of an impulse Google search. Half a day later, an Amazon package arrives, and your new sense of self is here.
Ween is a band that came into existence during the era when identity had been reduced to convenience. Their music, which rapidly shifts between genres and cultures, often feels like a campy pastiche of things that were once taken seriously. Their country songs sound like ideas of country songs, as does their country twang. On The Mollusk, which parodies pretentious progressive rock among other things, their lyrics are lofty nonsense—but they're fun lofty nonsense, because they were written to be lofty nonsense for a listener who's aware that lofty nonsense is intended. The intended meanings of their songs often lie beneath the obvious signifiers of meaning, because to Ween, none of that meaning means much anymore. Rather, those meanings are aesthetic more than anything, and meant to be enjoyed as such.
Their live concerts have few pretenses. The band shows up in t-shirts, looking like middle-aged men, because that's what they are. They could be any middle-aged band at any festival, save for the fact that they are Ween—a band uniquely prepared to put on a staggeringly good live show, because they're prepared to offer a multitude of concert experiences. There is no singular Ween concert. Instead, there are twenty variations on a Ween concert all offered at once, with thrash metal following pop rock following jazz or country or psychedelic trip.
In the late nineties, Ween was often compared to South Park, which shares a similar juvenile irreverence with them. But South Park curdled into nihilism: its creators never grasped that, for all they loved to scorn preachy people spreading messages, their "lack of ideology" was itself a preachy ideology. Ween, by contrast, has soul, which feels ridiculous to say but is self-evidently true. They are shockingly good at being tender when they want to be tender; their silly songs often have emotional heft despite their silliness, and their sincerest songs are sweet, mature, and moving. Their music is fun, but they take their craft incredibly seriously. Their cleverness never undermines their heart, perhaps because that cleverness is how they go looking for their heart to begin with. And if there's a waft of bullshit about their music, it's because they grew up past the point where all music had become bullshit, and more patently so the more sincere it pretended to be. At some point, you can't write about the times you're in without your music belonging to those times.
There's something refreshing about the sheer simplicity of a Ween show. They come out without an opening act, without fanfare, and play for about three hours. They're laid-back and clearly having fun. Their set lists are different every night, in part because they clearly go with what feels like a good time in the moment. They're good musicians, but they're not anal-retentive about how they sound live; their shows are extraordinary because their music is extraordinary, and if they hit more notes and reach more tones and find more vibes than other bands, it's because they seemingly realized that that's all music is, and made it their job to do as much of it as they know how.
The lack of pretense is striking, in part because it exposes how often there is a pretense, even in the places and cultures and people who pretend to be pretense-free. Identity has become easy to adopt, and there is simultaneously an extraordinary pressure to have an identity—in part, I think, because of the anxious culture-wide sense that identity doesn't mean what it once did, and that it's a sin not to know exactly who you are. Ween has no identity; how could they? Their music isn't just amorphous, it's easy: its appeal is obvious, and requires no investment or research to appreciate. If there's a "central" kind of Ween fan, it's someone who grew up without a culture, likely in some anonymous suburb, absorbing the world as it filtered through TV shows and Reddit. Perhaps this someone lacks a singular sense of self. Perhaps that's a genuine loss or lack, and perhaps it's the opposite: perhaps they know their life by the feel of it, and themselves by the space they occupy, and don't succumb to the anxious idea, pressed upon them by others, that they need to "find" anything more.
You can call Ween an inventive and imaginative and creative band, because they are, but their creativity isn't an identity. It's simply the prerequisite to their craft: their music is surprising and off-beat and unusual because their music is engaging, and because this is how you engage. There's not much to unpack beyond that. Sometimes their music is funny, and sometimes it's heartfelt, and sometimes it's unnerving, because these are things that music can be. Their live show is the best show I've ever seen, both times I've seen it. Why? Because it's good music, played well, in all the ways that make live music good. If there's nothing else to say, then that itself is what's interesting—in part because it exposes how often we assume there needs to be an "else."
Ween is a band that came into existence during the era when identity had been reduced to convenience. Their music, which rapidly shifts between genres and cultures, often feels like a campy pastiche of things that were once taken seriously. Their country songs sound like ideas of country songs, as does their country twang. On The Mollusk, which parodies pretentious progressive rock among other things, their lyrics are lofty nonsense—but they're fun lofty nonsense, because they were written to be lofty nonsense for a listener who's aware that lofty nonsense is intended. The intended meanings of their songs often lie beneath the obvious signifiers of meaning, because to Ween, none of that meaning means much anymore. Rather, those meanings are aesthetic more than anything, and meant to be enjoyed as such.
Their live concerts have few pretenses. The band shows up in t-shirts, looking like middle-aged men, because that's what they are. They could be any middle-aged band at any festival, save for the fact that they are Ween—a band uniquely prepared to put on a staggeringly good live show, because they're prepared to offer a multitude of concert experiences. There is no singular Ween concert. Instead, there are twenty variations on a Ween concert all offered at once, with thrash metal following pop rock following jazz or country or psychedelic trip.
In the late nineties, Ween was often compared to South Park, which shares a similar juvenile irreverence with them. But South Park curdled into nihilism: its creators never grasped that, for all they loved to scorn preachy people spreading messages, their "lack of ideology" was itself a preachy ideology. Ween, by contrast, has soul, which feels ridiculous to say but is self-evidently true. They are shockingly good at being tender when they want to be tender; their silly songs often have emotional heft despite their silliness, and their sincerest songs are sweet, mature, and moving. Their music is fun, but they take their craft incredibly seriously. Their cleverness never undermines their heart, perhaps because that cleverness is how they go looking for their heart to begin with. And if there's a waft of bullshit about their music, it's because they grew up past the point where all music had become bullshit, and more patently so the more sincere it pretended to be. At some point, you can't write about the times you're in without your music belonging to those times.
There's something refreshing about the sheer simplicity of a Ween show. They come out without an opening act, without fanfare, and play for about three hours. They're laid-back and clearly having fun. Their set lists are different every night, in part because they clearly go with what feels like a good time in the moment. They're good musicians, but they're not anal-retentive about how they sound live; their shows are extraordinary because their music is extraordinary, and if they hit more notes and reach more tones and find more vibes than other bands, it's because they seemingly realized that that's all music is, and made it their job to do as much of it as they know how.
The lack of pretense is striking, in part because it exposes how often there is a pretense, even in the places and cultures and people who pretend to be pretense-free. Identity has become easy to adopt, and there is simultaneously an extraordinary pressure to have an identity—in part, I think, because of the anxious culture-wide sense that identity doesn't mean what it once did, and that it's a sin not to know exactly who you are. Ween has no identity; how could they? Their music isn't just amorphous, it's easy: its appeal is obvious, and requires no investment or research to appreciate. If there's a "central" kind of Ween fan, it's someone who grew up without a culture, likely in some anonymous suburb, absorbing the world as it filtered through TV shows and Reddit. Perhaps this someone lacks a singular sense of self. Perhaps that's a genuine loss or lack, and perhaps it's the opposite: perhaps they know their life by the feel of it, and themselves by the space they occupy, and don't succumb to the anxious idea, pressed upon them by others, that they need to "find" anything more.
You can call Ween an inventive and imaginative and creative band, because they are, but their creativity isn't an identity. It's simply the prerequisite to their craft: their music is surprising and off-beat and unusual because their music is engaging, and because this is how you engage. There's not much to unpack beyond that. Sometimes their music is funny, and sometimes it's heartfelt, and sometimes it's unnerving, because these are things that music can be. Their live show is the best show I've ever seen, both times I've seen it. Why? Because it's good music, played well, in all the ways that make live music good. If there's nothing else to say, then that itself is what's interesting—in part because it exposes how often we assume there needs to be an "else."