In 2011 Prog raised Ween’s The Mollusk from the depths of the swirling 90s to argue that, in a time when traditional prog was drowning, the American duo offered safe harbour for the genre’s best traditions.
Few genres have lent themselves so perfectly to the quest for one’s own allegorical white whale as prog rock. But by 1997 most remnants of traditional prog were long since buried on the ocean bed.
Prog lovers who remained loyal to early incarnations of Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant or Fairport Convention must have felt lost in a thematic mire when tuning in to new acts like Radiohead – who’d traded the comfortable decompression of The Bends for cryptic, electronic ponderings.
Fortunately, a Pennsylvanian duo by the names of Gene and Dean Ween sought to remind everyone that time-honoured ideas borne out of traditional concerns still made for the most wonderful of progressive concepts.
I’ll Be Your Jonny on the Spot – YouTube 
By 1997 Ween had dipped their heads, shoulders, knees and toes into a variety of stylised waters; most reputably on the Nashville-flavoured album 12 Golden Country Greats. None feel as smartly-honed as The Mollusk.
Dressed in a Storm Thorgerson sleeve depicting a collaged sea creature, its cover provided an apt indication of the music that lurked under its surface: it was knowingly progressive and endearingly archetypal in a way that only two young practising pop historians could imaginatively fathom.
Through strange arrangements and techniques gleaned from their previous work with producer Andrew Weiss, Ween surfaced from the abyss to charter a modern day Melvillian adventure.
After a stuttering start with opener I’m Dancing In The Show Tonight, its title track eventually bobs on ethereal waves of flute-looped lines and lyrics into the turbulent storms of I’ll Be Your Jonny On The Spot and angered Irish folk of The Blarney Stone.
Anchoring the entire work, the colossal composition Buckingham Green – with its chorus-absent structure – owes much of its magnificence to Gabriel-led Genesis. The influence on the whimsical, perhaps childlike, songs resonate with a quaint and English demeanour.
A character whose throwaway claims of puppies and flans on Polka Dot Tail, or the lethargic descriptions of lysergic burnout on Mutilated Lips (‘Of the worm-like tips of tentacles expanding/In my mind, I’m fine, accepting only fresh brine’) ring with joke sniggers of Syd Barrett’s Octopus.
Intoxicating guitar sounds plucked from Davey Gilmour’s locker swirl drunkenly, like a nautically pissed – and not piss-taking – American Floyd, appreciatively and psychedelically saving one of prog’s lost treasures.