Since it's getting close to Hallo-Ween I thought maybe I should write another entry about one of my favorite bands, Ween.  I think I talked a bit about their first album God Ween Satan: The Oneness, last time I wrote a Ween-related entry, although I can't totally remember.  At any rate I think I'll take a quick look at their third album, Pure Guava today.

I could not wrap my head around Pure Guava when I first heard it.  It is a deeply weird album with a lot of noise, odd voices, and cheap sounding keyboards.  But when it clicked for me, it clicked hard.  

One of the craziest things about Pure Guava is it was Ween's first release for a major label.  It's odd that they got signed by a major label at all, given their previous releases were the aforementioned God Ween Satan and the even weirder The Pod.  Don't get me wrong, I love both of those albums, but they are odd, silly, long, dense, difficuly, and semi-amateurishly produced.  There is nothing about them that screams this band has major crossover potential to become a mainstream  hit.  I can't imagine what record executive heard those albums and thought these guys are going to be huge.  

I think it really speaks to what an odd landscape the early 90's was for the music industry.  After Nirvana came along and pretty much killed off the 80's, it seemed like the record companies had no clue what these crazy Gen X kids were going to be into, so they just signed every single underground band they could find.  It's really crazy how many bands got deals with major labels back then.  Predictably a lot of these bands did not become major successes, but it still raised the visibility of bands like Ween by a huge amount.  I actually heard some of their songs on the radio and saw their videos played on MTV, back when MTV still played music.

At any rate, rather than take advantage of their new major label status to do something that would appeal to the masses, Ween released possibly their weirdest and most difficult album yet.  It still sounds like two kids who made a record in their bedroom and somehow got it a bit glossied up in a professional studio.  From what I understand, that's pretty much exactly what it is.  All the songs were recorded on a 4-track cassette recorder and then probably mixed and mastered in big fancy studios.  I've also heard that Pure Guava is pretty much songs they had leftover from their previous album The Pod.  So for their major label debut, they're shot at the big-time, instead of going into the studio with professional producers and back-up musicians, they basically released songs they already had recorded on their own that presumably weren't deemed good enough to make the previous album.  And somehow despite all that, this album is great.

If you haven't trained your ears to early Ween, that greatness probably won't be apparent at first.  This really probably isn't a good starting point to introduce yourself to the band.  It honestly might take some chemical alteration to enjoy it if you're not prepared for this sort of thing.  It's abrasive, it's crude, it's long, they sometimes make mistakes or start laughing during songs, and they sometimes include unpleasant sounds like feedback or screaming.  And yet once you become accustomed to it, it creates this weird world of its own that's strangely fun and appealing.  It has its own language.  

I can honestly say this album changed the way that I look at music.  I started to understand you can use noise and strange sounds in a musical way.  Just because something isn't traditionally harmonious or pretty doesn't mean it's not a valid way to make music.  And also if you do want harmonious and pretty, look no further than the song Sarah, an unexpectedly poignant and sweet track smack dab in the middle of all the madness.  You could slip it onto a mixtape of love songs and I don't think anyone would blink an eye.

There are also tons of strange potentially off-putting and possibly offensive songs on here that kick ass.  From the opener Little Birdy to the strange deep voiced Big Jilm to the minimalistic and silly closer Poop Ship Destroyer there are all kinds of things here that you probably will not like at all on your first listen.  You may be inclined to wonder if this even qualifies as music.  But there's a chance you could really grow to love these oddities.  For my money perhaps the best litmus test is Mourning Glory.  It's over five minutes of feedback and a heavily effects-treated vocal telling a story about three little pumpkins that go off into the woods.  I honestly found it borderline unlistenable at first, but grew to love it.  If you can appreciate that song and see the awesomeness in it, then I think you have unlocked this era of Ween.

On their next album Chocolate and Cheese they would expand into a full band and go record the songs in a professional studio.  It's still a weird album by normal standards, but it's about a million times more accessible and traditionally musical sounding than early Ween.  It's a turning point for sure as after that they'd never totally return to the sound or feel of their first three albums and probably my overall favorite songs and albums come a little later in their career (The Mollusk FTW), but I'm really glad these early albums exist, too.  Ween just wouldn't be Ween without them.