Following the release of The Pod, the young and fresh-faced Ween boys set out on their first major United States tour, a modest U.K. tour, and signed onto a major record label. Things were finally starting to really look up for these doofuses!

Pure Guava is Ween ‘s silly psychedelic pop record. Now, being signed onto Elektra Records means a conscious change in production values. Compared to The Pod this album sounds like an audiophile’s wet dream, so that’s a plus. Also, being the complete assholes that they were, being signed onto a major label probably also meant doing everything they could to deliberately straddle the invisible line between commerciality and total fuck-you inaccessibility. In other words, Pure Guava is a lot more of the same old shit.

This album, like its predecessor, was recorded crudely on a four-track cassette outside of a professional studio, this time with a little more care to make (almost) everything very listenable. Besides the fact that the songs don’t sound like they were funneled through a sewer drain, almost every single track on Ween’s third album sounds like an outtake from The Pod. While the shitty production paired with the sick and stoned backstory added a extra layer of thematic continuity on The Pod, here the slicker production just makes these 19 tracks sound even more blatantly like a hodge-podge of cobbled-together cuts. There’s still distortion, and electronic hooligan antics, and mumbled, addled “singing”, and repetitive loops, but most of it is directionless and unexciting.

Against all odds, Pure Guava yielded Ween’s highest-ever charting single “Push th’ Little Daisies”, which also got the MTV music video treatment (and then some publicity on Beavis & Butthead). It’s one of the better tracks, for sure, where Gener’s vocals are warped into a demented, squealing Eric Cartman-like voice as he sings “PUUUUSH THE LITTLE DAISIES AND MAKE ‘EM COME UP!” At first thought it seems like the song might be about death, right? Other interpretations say it’s about titties and nipples, which is more in-line with what one would expect from these dorks! At any rate, the melody is rather inventive, poppy and pretty for stupid song about boobs. The music video is pretty funny too, you should Youtube it right now.

Only a few other choice cuts remain, but nothing here reaches the heights of the best material on The Pod. I like “Big Jilm” a lot, it’s a big, dumb, hilarious truckin’ anthem that inexplicably borrows some lyrics from “I Gots a Weasel” off of the debut GodWeenSatan: The Oneness. It’s rolls back and forth on a couple of chords, it’s got some jaunty “doo-doo-doo“s, it’s got Gene and Dean yelling “BIG JILM!” and “THE BIGGEST THING YOU EVER DID DONE SEE BIG JILM!” in their best hick voices. Legend has it the song was supposed to be called “Big Jim” but Deaner’s handwriting was terrible, and the rest is history! I also probably like “The Goin’ Gets Tough From the Getgo” more than I should because I find the pretentious, artsy-fartsy Bohemian caricature portrayals extremely authentic and amusing, complete with subtle little condescending snorts as they sneer effeminately through lines like “Scrape for a dollar/You’ll die smiling/Learning the same lessons once again” and getting each other’s approval (“Isn’t that right, Gener?” / “So right, tell me again once more“). My last major soft spot is for “Reggaejunkiejew”, a song that is possibly about a white-guy-with-dreadlocks poseur that one of the Ween guys knows personally. The song runs through some abrasive electronic loops under some menacingly aggressive shit-talk. “Take a permanent vacation/Get the fuck out of town/Go see Jamaica, motherfucker/Let your dreadlocks down“. Oh yeah, and the repeated “Matzofarian Reggaejunkiejew, fuck you!” makes me laugh every time!

“Little Birdy”, “Tender Situation”, “Springtheme” and “Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)” are the other passable tunes, making this album incredibly front-loaded. The rest of the album, as far as I’m concerned, is total filler. By my count, that’s 11 more tracks. Most of the back half of the album is terribly uninteresting and flat, with particular special attention to “Mourning Glory” which I consider to be the very first truly awful Ween track released on an official LP. It’s one big five-minute earache consisting of Gener screaming into the microphone like a Tony Soprano dumb guy over very loud guitar feedback about pumpkins and the woods and god knows what else. It’s very hard to understand and it goes on way too long. I also strongly dislike “I Play It Off Legit” because I feel like Ween literally did this (whatever this is) better two tracks ago on “The Goin’ Gets Tough From the Getgo”. That one was funny! This one isn’t! This one has a less interesting looping background vamp and it doesn’t have funny voices! Everything else doesn’t get too bad, but nothing at all is added to the table. Songs like “Flies on My Dick” and “Touch My Tooter” are silly and dumb and devoid of enough musical progression to keep it interesting for longer than a minute. Songs like “Loving U thru It All” and the previously mentioned “I Play It Off Legit” employ the repetitive call-and-response schtick that Ween did WAY better earlier on “Blackjack” (GodWeenSatan: The Oneness) or “Molly” (The Pod). Songs like “I Saw Gener Cryin’ In His Sleep” and “Pumpin’ 4 the Man” are forgettable throwaway vignettes.

I guess the bottom line here is that even though The Pod was gross and murky and intentionally difficult to enjoy, the high points on that album really were pretty high. The melodies were imaginative, the tone was sludgy and atmospheric, it all came together pretty well, and a few more repeated listens brought something new to the ear. Pure Guava‘s high points aren’t that high, the melodies are almost entirely unimaginative, and the tone is…I don’t know, there is no tone. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel wading through this record…I guess I feel like the effort just wasn’t put into this and it shows. That was probably the point. I like irony as much as the next guy, but it doesn’t enhance my own life to pretend to like Pure Guava more than I actually do. Repeated listens certainly didn’t help me, either. To each his own though, plenty of reviews of this album are favorable and many people consider this one to be the pinnacle, but I think that’s absolutely nuts! Congrats to Ween on their major label debut, but I’m gonna place this one firmly at the bottom of my list and just move on.

KINDA BAD