Toad The Wet Sprocket

Fear (Columbia ’91) Rating: A-
Playing a tuneful brand of jangly pop rock, the cumbersomely named Toad the Wet Sprocket was a fine, much under appreciated ‘90s band. Fear, the band's third album, was probably their critical and commercial high point, as it delivered consistently thoughtful, expertly crafted songs. Two of those songs, the gorgeously shimmering “Walk On The Ocean” and the catchy, yearning pop of “All I Want,” were even Top 20 hits, though the band didn’t successfully build on that career momentum like many expected them to (though the almost as good follow-up album, 1994's Dulcinea, also went platinum). Instead, Toad the Wet Sprocket occupies a niche alongside other like-minded (and overlooked) ‘90s artists such as Crowded House, Gin Blossoms, The Connells, and Grant Lee Buffalo. Granted, there’s nothing groundbreaking here, and perhaps that explains the band’s low profile given the stiff competition the band faced against the likes of R.E.M., U2, and Nirvana; the unmarketable band name and this album’s forbidding album cover also didn’t help the band’s commercial cause. However, the band’s enticingly eclectic sound, including some surprising guitar heroics, impressive use of soft-to-loud/light-to-dark dynamics, and evocative harmonies, all in the service of undeniably strong songs, holds up very well almost 20 years later. It’ll hold up well 20 years from now, too, and 20 years beyond that as well. Aside from the aforementioned singles, which for my money were simply two of the most perfect pop songs of the decade, among the plentiful other highlights are "Is It For Me?," which delivers bright catchy pop with memorable falsetto vocals, "Butterflies," which has some groovy guitar and a nice contrast between female spoken word and alternately poppy and moody multi-tracked male vocals, "Hold Her Down," which is darkly intense both musically and lyrically, "Pray Your Gods," whose quiet acoustic verses lead into a louder impassioned chorus, while angelic female vocals towards the end provide the proverbial icing on the cake, and "In My Ear," a delightfully tuneful keyboard heavy jangle rocker. But really this is a consistently high quality album throughout whose minor imperfections are that it occasionally veers towards pleasant blandness and I could easily live without the long-ish last two tracks; pre-cd era this album might have received an A rating.

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