Review Summary: Raw. Melodic. Emotional. Poignant. Toad’s sophomore album is an overlooked triumph.
Toad the Wet Sprocket hinted at greatness with their debut album Bread and Circus, recorded for $650 and showcasing a group of teenagers sounding remarkably mature for their age. I mean, come on, imagine a group of teenagers today making an album as literate and expressive as Toad’s debut. It was a remarkable achievement, despite garnering very little attention, critically or commercially. And it turns out that as good as Bread and Circus was, the band would improve by leaps and bounds on their next album, 1990’s Pale. Beginning with what frontman/lyricist Glen Phillips has referred to as the “clinical depression song”, “Torn” sets the mood brilliantly. The song is about as downbeat as they come, but rather than simply wallowing in self-pity, the song is an introspective portrait of an uncertain youth, containing lines such as “love like an infant trying to stand up.” Then there is “Don’t Go Away”, which comes dangerously close to entering the realm of the cliché at first glance. Upon reading the lyrics, however, a listener finds that Phillips is directing this not at a lover, but at a friend who is moving away. Throughout the album, there are tunes such as this which cover a variety of relatively atypical topics. For a lyricist as young as Phillips (he was 18 at the time the album was recorded), this is quite impressive. The joyously dark observation of “Corporal Brown” and the political-yet-not-preachy “Chile” are two great examples of this. Guitarist Todd Nichols offers two solid tunes of his own: the reflective “I Think About” and the optimistic “Nothing Is Alone”.
This is indeed the same band that would go on to release several successful singles, but not before these humble beginnings. Toad's pre-Fear albums tend to fly under the radar, but it is here that the true raw talent of this band is most evident, considering that both this and the band’s debut were recorded live-in-studio. To yield such amazing results on such a tight budget is remarkable, and Toad the Wet Sprocket don’t waste a single note here. The watercolor guitars and Randy Guss’s tasteful drumming create the perfect backdrop for this album, and the songs explode with passion at the most intense moments and whisper in the dim light of the more quiet and downcast ones. From the squeaking door and gentle guitar textures which open “Torn” to the final heart-wrenching note Phillips belts out on closer “She Cried”, this band creates a raw masterpiece filled with emotional poignancy. A criminally overlooked masterpiece.
