Pure Guava


Pure Guava is the third studio album and major label debut by American rock band Ween, released on November 10, 1992, by Elektra Records. The record contains the US radio hit "Push th' Little Daisies".

Background

The album features one of Ween's best-known songs, "Push th' Little Daisies." The song was also released as a single on August Records in 1993, including both the album and radio edit versions of the song, as well as the tracks "Ode to Rene", "I Smoke Some Grass " and "Mango Woman"; "Puerto Rican Power" replaces "I Smoke Some Grass" on some editions.
In a 1993 interview with Australia's Triple J, Dean Ween said many of the album's songs come from at least two tapes the band made for friends, including Springstuff and The Caprice Classic Tape.
The song "Big Jilm" was inspired by a car dealer named James A. Lemons who worked at the dealership Dean Ween's father owned.
The song "Poop Ship Destroyer" became a live staple for the band, although the live performances usually bear little resemblance to the album version and are instead played as a protracted jam.

Touring

The band toured throughout the United States in late 1992 and 1993 to support the album. One of these shows was in the band's hometown of New Hope, Pennsylvania. In October 1993, they did an 11 show tour of Australia, a country where "Push th' Little Daisies" became an unexpected radio hit.

Reception

editor Heather Phares called the album "more polished and concise" than their previous albums The Pod and GodWeenSatan: The Oneness and wrote, "Considering Elektra released it, it's just as uncompromising as their previous work, but it hints at just how much further they could go with their music." Bill Wyman in Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+, noting that it was "Very, very weird, but I can't stop playing ". Robert Christgau was more negative in his Village Voice consumer guide, finding that the band wrote their "fucked-up" songs "without thinking ". He went on to disparagingly call them "the kind of rec-room gigglefritzes who enjoy a good nigger joke when they're sure their audience is sophisticated enough to enjoy it. And to be perfectly honest, I don't hear one of those here."
Pure Guava was described as a modest commercial success. In its first six months of release it sold 65,000 copies.

Legacy

In 1999, Ned Raggett, writing for the website Freaky Trigger, named Pure Guava the 53rd best album of the '90s, calling it "the greatest 'major label debut after an indie career' record of the decade. Not least because it was recorded in the same exact conditions and from the same exact sessions as most of said earlier indie career, so that means that Ween hit the big time with a record compiled from the outtakes that weren't good enough for their previous album, and it's still one of the best records ever made." The same year, German magazine Spex included the album on its list of the 100 best albums of the 20th century. Aphex Twin named it one of his 10 favorite albums of all time. In 1992, Faith No More covered parts of "The Goin' Gets Tough From the Getgo" on its Angel Dust tour.
In 2013, Andrew Earles of Spin ranked Pure Guava 7th on its list of the "40 Weirdest Post-Nevermind Major Label Albums". He noted the presence of "psychotically ill-tuned guitars, drum machines at their fartiest, sage advice not to 'caress the weasel,' ballads that ignored rhythm and reason, a five-minute power-electronics suite, a few dubious sing-a-longs centered around offensive accents, and, of course, a ride on the 'Poop Ship Destroyer.'" In 2014, Earles listed the album in his book Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981–1996, in which he calls Pure Guava "one of the strangest albums ever to carry the logo of a major label". He also credits it as the second album released on a major label to be recorded wholly on an analog four-track recorder, after Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.

Track listing

All tracks written by Ween, except "Flies on My Dick," by Ween and Guy Heller.

Personnel

Ween
Additional musicians
  • Mean Ween – vocal on "Little Birdy"
  • Guy Heller – vocals on "Flies on My Dick"
  • Larry Curtin – backing vocals and whistling on "I Saw Gener Cryin' in His Sleep"
  • Scott Lowe – second vocal and whistling on "Don't Get 2 Close "
Technical
  • Dean Ween – producer, engineer
  • Gene Ween – producer, engineer
  • Andrew Weiss – mixing
  • Patricia Frey – digital editing
  • Howie Weinberg – mastering
  • Tom Nichols – photography
  • Reiner Design Consultants – design
  • Stephan Said – additional instrumentation

    Charts