Pure Guava

The final album Ween recorded on a four-track (before 2007’s La Cucaracha) and the first it released on a major label, Pure Guava marks the end of one era and the start of another for the beloved Pennsylvania duo. To everyone’s amazement, Elektra agreed to release the album even though it was as homespun and unconventional as the underground works that preceded it. In Pure Guava, there's less full-band playing and more bedroom tinkering, but even as they used drum machines to create delightfully skewed takes on hip-hop and techno, Dean and Gene Ween uncovered moments of unexpected poignancy and tenderness. There's something purely elegiac in “Sarah,” but even bizarre experiments like “The Stallion Pt. 3” and the surprise pop hit “Push the Little Daisies” carry undertones of sweetness and romance. Ween was by no means smoothing out its act for the benefit of the mainstream, but Pure Guava was the first Ween album to suggest there could be a genuine soul band lurking inside this socially maladjusted cellar-punk outfit.