Toad The Wet Sprocket - Biography
By Marcus Kagler
After Nirvana singlehandedly busted down the mainstream door to the alternative universe, unknown bands with a focus on power pop gradually began to slip onto the mainstream airwaves right behind the grunge renaissance, slowly gathering their forces before gaining radio prominence when grunge finally pittered out. The saccharine pop of bands like Gin Blossoms, Semisonic, and Better Than Ezra were basically the grunge anti-thesis but it was a little band with a silly name from the sleepy coastal town of Santa Barbara, California who ushered in the rock pop movement of the mid-90’s. Toad the Wet Sprocket’s third album, Fear (1991 Columbia) was an international phenomenon that spawned multiple hit singles and earned the band a diehard following. Toad’s eclectic mixture of folk, jangly alternative rock, and pristine melodies set the template for all the pop rock bands that would proceed them. By the end of decade however, Toad The Wet Sprocket and most of their fellow pop compatriots would lose ground to the boy band and nu-metal juggernauts of the late 90’s, ending the short lived mainstream power pop resurgence. Surprisingly, the music of Toad the Wet Sprocket still holds up remarkably well in the new millennium with similar indie pop groups like The New Pornographers and The Shins picking up where Toad left off.
Lifting their moniker from an obscure Monty Python sketch, high school friends Glen Phillips (vocals), Dean Dinning (bass), Todd Nichols (guitars), and Randy Guss (drums) formed Toad The Wet Sprocket in 1986 when Phillips was just 14 years old. After honing a melancholy jangly pop sound the quartet scrounged up a meager $650 and recorded their debut full length, Bread and Circus (1988 Abe Records) a few years later. The album didn’t make much of a splash but it did catch the eye of Columbia Records who signed the band. The group reconvened a few years later and released their sophomore full length, Pale (1990 Columbia) which showcased a maturation in their songwriting but still leaned toward alternative dourness. The album wasn’t a hit by any means but it did earn Toad a cult following throughout the U.S. underground scene. After a prolonged tour with Michael Penn the quartet re-entered the studio with producer Gavin Mackillop and began working on their third full length album. Fear was a remarkable leap forward into the realm of pop rock complete with tight melodies, literate lyrics, and infectious hooks. On the strength of the pastoral ballad “Walk On The Ocean” and the unstoppable pop rocker “All I Want” the album was an instant smash hit.
Fear catapulted Toad from relative obscurity to platinum selling modern rock radio staple almost overnight and the band would tour the album for the next year. A recording of their final stop on the tour was released over a decade later as Welcome Home: Live at the Arlington Theatre, Santa Barbara 1992 (2005 Columbia) and serves a remarkable reminder of Toad’s live power. Dulcinea (1994-Columbia) was a much darker and rawer affair but was also a platinum selling success spawning another mainstream radio staple with the hook laden rocker, “Fall Down”. Toad once again hit the road for multiple tours and by the end of ’94 the band was at the pinnacle of their career. The group would remain relatively quiet over the next three years only releasing the b-sides compilation In Light Syrup (Columbia) in 1995. After a prolonged hiatus the band reconvened to record their next album but creative differences would cause tensions to run high throughout the sessions.
Coil (1997 Columbia) followed a similar thread to Dulcinea but with pop rock quickly falling out of favor to boy bands combined with a lackluster publicity scheme from Columbia the album was doomed to fail. Coil received lukewarm reviews with the single “Come Down” charting moderately before fading in distant memory. Rather than fight an uphill “come back” battle, Toad The Wet Sprocket called it a day the following year. The band reunited in 1999 to record two new songs for a greatest hits compilation, P.S. A Toad Retrospective (Columbia) and have conducted reunion tours throughout the years but currently have no plans to record new material. Phillips launched a successful solo career, which continues to this day while Nichols and Dinning have released two albums under the moniker Lap Dog.