Wacky Ween delivers

November 30, 2007|Joan Anderman, Globe Staff

From what I could make out, Ween sounded great at the Orpheum on Wednesday. But listening wasn't easy, as distractions were frequent: Dodging lurching bodies and trying to get the girl in the aisle to stop playing with my hair took time. Luckily the band, performing for a rowdy, exultant, and apparently very high crowd, kept it up for nearly 2 1/2 hours.

Ween dove into one of the most demented catalogs in alternative rock with signature oddball virtuosity. As the audience needed no pumping up, Dean (Mickey Melchiondo) and Gene (Aaron Freeman) didn't say much and seemed content to focus their energies on churning out copious quantities of twisted tuneage. Backed by a three-piece rhythm section and a hard-working fog machine, the duo reached back into the psychedelic murk for "Doctor Rock," resurrected the Afro-Caribbean funk workout "Voodoo Lady" as a metal jam, and did glam proud with "The Grobe" and "Buckingham Green."

They recalled their country period with an extra-mean version of "[Expletive] Up a Rope" and a sensitive acoustic read of "Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain." "Bananas and Blow," the evening's most festive singalong, could have been written by Jimmy Buffett's sinister twin. Gene and Dean wore their questionable taste like a badge of honor and grinned good-naturedly through "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" and "The H.I.V. Song." In Ween's world, the latter qualifies as a galvanizing anthem, and the band trotted it out as the first encore.

Only a handful of songs from the excellent new Rounder Records release, "La Cucaracha," made it to the set list. And while the album's ear-popping immersion in a swath of musical styles was neutralized, perhaps necessarily, in the pared-down setting of a rock show, the new material supplied some memorable highlights in a concert with few lows. Anchoring the extremes of the Ween spectrum: the 10-minute prog epic "Woman and Man," which featured Dean and Gene at their most righteously heroic, and "Your Party," a menacing smooth-jazz set piece that brought the band's subtler instincts into bold relief.

Ween may be best-loved for its bloated aesthetics and sick humor, but these guys are seriously talented players and gifted deconstructionists. Like Zappa, whose spirit hovered over the proceedings, Ween fused the scattered and sometimes nonsensical parts with skill, savvy, and boundless enthusiasm.