It was a long Friday night at Terminal 5 at the first of two sold-out performances by Ween, the band from New Hope, Pa., that has turned two decades of long nights into one unexpectedly long — and fruitful — career. And this long night was ending with a long song, loudly sung by just about everyone in the building.
Ween at Terminal 5, with, from left, Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween), Dave Dreiwitz and Mickey Melchiondo (Dean Ween). A review by Kelefa Sanneh, Page 6.
Aaron Freeman, a k a Gene Ween, left, and Mickey Melchiondo , a k a Dean Ween, on Friday.
“Aye, aye, aye/Sharpen your boot and bludgeon your eye,” growled Mickey Melchiondo, known as Dean Ween, doing his best impersonation of an Irish pirate, or maybe his worst. (Attention, Irish people and pirates: please send your letters of complaint directly to New Hope.) His partner, Aaron Freeman, known as Gene Ween, was grinning, though that doesn’t mean much, because he never really stops grinning.
But then Mr. Melchiondo paused and shot Mr. Freeman a look. (They would probably love to be called Mr. and Mr. Ween in these pages, but wouldn’t that be overdoing it?) He sighed and, thinking of the verses still to come, said he wished they had never started the song. Now it was too late to stop.
The story of Ween starts in the 1980s, with a handful of self-released cassettes. Then came a pair of brilliant and beloved indie albums (“GodWeenSatan: The Oneness” and “The Pod”) and an amusing run at alt-rock stardom (Ween spent most of the ’90s recording for Elektra Records), a sad and druggy and not at all bad 2003 CD (“Quebec”), a meltdown (the band had to cancel a 2004 tour because of a “problem within the band,” according to a statement from the manager) and now a kind of rebirth.
The new Ween album is “La Cucaracha” (Rounder), which feels fresher and more inviting than anything they have done recently. Like the best Ween songs, these ones are both obviously funny and subtly so. “Your Party,” the smarmy-smooth closing track that is also (for what it’s worth) the single, gives Mr. Freeman a chance to wax rhapsodic about a rather tame-sounding gathering; he purrs, “There were beverages laid out for the party/There were candy and spices and tri-colored pastas.” It sounded great on Friday night, even with a keyboard line in place of David Sanborn’s perfectly oleaginous saxophone.
If Ween’s meticulous albums tend to emphasize Mr. Freeman’s half-fey voice, the band’s concerts tend to congeal around Mr. Melchiondo’s wild guitar playing. Over the years, Ween has evolved into a shaggy but virtuosic live band, playing with an exuberance that sometimes flattens the music (a surreal country song might be reborn as a joke-rock singalong), but more often enriches it.
And if it took the band members the better part of an hour to get warmed up on Friday night — well, that’s all right, because they played for about two and a half. “Pandy Fackler,” a jazzy song about a jazzy “working girl,” eventually gave way to a dazzling and unpredictable keyboard solo by Glenn McClelland, who seemed to be channeling early-’70s Herbie Hancock. Claude Coleman Jr., the band’s supremely dexterous drummer, found ways to shift the rhythmic emphasis even while galloping through “I’ll Be Your Jonny on the Spot.” And more than one song was saved by one of Mr. Melchiondo’s overdriven solos; when he bends notes, it sounds as if his guitar is melting.
Ween’s audience overlaps somewhat with the world of jam bands, and you could see that by looking at the crowd — or, more accurately, by looking at the hazy cloud that hung above it. Part of the fun was hearing profane little songs expanded into genial (though still, often, foulmouthed) celebrations. “Reggaejunkiejew,” an old favorite, became on Friday an endless explosion of groove and noise. And connoisseurs cheered for unexpected back-catalog rarities like “Strap On That Jammypac,” a disfigured blues blast.
There’s something inspiring about the way the band works, burrowing deep into uncharted (or, at any rate, inadvisable) territory. After that moment of doubt, midway through “The Blarney Stone,” Mr. Melchiondo stealed himself and got ready for the next verse. A good idea had come to seem like a bad one. But Mr. and Mr. Ween kept playing, secure in the knowledge that it would eventually come to seem good again.
