Toad the Wet Sprocket album

Toad the Wet Sprocket was among the best and most popular of the adult alternative pop/rockers of the early '90s. The band harnessed R.E.M.'s jangle pop, smoothed it out, and turned it into something pretty, melodic, and accessible to a wide audience. Toad the Wet Sprocket never was as idiosyncratic or edgy as R.E.M., so it could reach a totally different audience, comprised equally of politically correct collegiates and housewives. Its third album, Fear, arrived in the late summer of 1991 (after R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion"), and it benefited from radio's new willingness to play alternative bands, as "All I Want" and "Walk on the Ocean" became staples on modern rock and adult contemporary stations alike. Its long-delayed follow-up, Dulcinea, appeared in 1994, and while it spawned the hit "Fall Down," it failed to capture the same audience as Fear. Its fifth album, 1997's Coil, did even worse, and the group disbanded the following year. Such a brief span of hitmaking years makes Toad the Wet Sprocket a perfect choice for a hits collection, which P.S.: A Toad Retrospective almost is. It has all the hits, plus many of the fan favorites, but not necessarily in the versions people know. There's a new version of the title track, remixes of "All I Want" and "Hold Her Down," the "non-album" version of "Jam," an edit of "Something's Always Wrong" -- not necessarily differences that are that noticeable, but are still a little disconcerting, and ultimately enough to make P.S. less than perfect. The alternate versions feel like misguided attempts to hook in die-hard fans (who may already own most of these takes), and while they're not alienating, they're not right, either. Nevertheless, it's still a good, basic collection -- enough to satisfy most casual fans, since it has the hits on one disc. [The Japanese edition offers the same songs but different packaging, although the cover remains the same.]

From the platform of success built by Fear, Toad the Wet Sprocket dove head first into their fourth release, Dulcinea. Without changing the formula too much, they conjured up 12 more hooks, stretching them ever so slightly to make the alternative tunes a bit edgier and the mellow ones a little folkier, and scoring a couple of modest hits along the way with "Something's Always Wrong" and "Fall Down." One of the thematic threads of Toad's music has always been a certain spirituality, a sense of awe and wonder in regard to life and death. Dulcinea exploits and explores that theme with reverence and humility, going so far as to close the album with "Reincarnation Song," a delicate examination of a soul's transition shrouded musically by a veil of electric guitar feedback. Counteracting that heaviness with an offbeat, country-tinged ditty about the pros of Nanci Griffith versus Loretta Lynn is pure Toad, never being pinned into a stylistic corner. One of the best songs on this album, and perhaps their entire catalog, is "Windmills," a moody look at the fragility and futility of existence that will cause not only the exquisite melody to linger with you, but contemplations of your own purpose in life. Framed by the flawless production of Gavin MacKillop, every song on this record creates a world of its own that is impossible not to be drawn into. [This is the enhanced version of the album.]