REVIEW: Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dulcinea (Columbia)
- Bob Gajarsky
College favorites Toad the Wet Sprocket have returned to the forefront of alternative radio with their fourth album, Dulcinea.
Lead single "Fall Down", which recently pushed its way to the top of Billboard's Modern Rock charts, is atypical from anything Toad have heretofore performed. This straightforward rock song hides a deeper lyrical content; the story of someone that fails to step in and help a friend whose life is falling apart. As is the story on previous releases, such as the platinum album Fear, Toad combine a serious message with a positive sound.
Strangely enough, however, the music on the rest of the album is much more stripped down. Two standout tracks, "Fly From Heaven" and "Woodburning", feature a kindler, gentler Toad that is one step away from pop smashes without giving in to the mainstream success they had with "All I Want". Why didn't they just duplicate that album's format?
Lead singer Glen Phillips explains. "For us, there was something missing on our last album that I think we've captured with Dulcinea. Fear was very manicured; our first experience in a studio with the luxury of time, so we experimented with over-dubs and the like. As a result, we lost some of that "band" feel. We missed that."
Most of Dulcinea sounds like an alternative Simon and Garfunkel for the 90s; laid-back, almost acoustic music with a deeper meaning about life and death. But, on the track "Nanci", the group compare the relative merits of Nancy Griffith and Loretta Lynn while playing around with a country and western beat you can bop along with.
There are two kinds of Toad the Wet Sprocket fans; 100,000 who bought Fear before a hit single, and many times that number who were inspired to buy it based on the strength of the top 20 hit "All I Want". For the first group, rejoice; Toad didn't sell out. For the second, and larger group, the pull of the music lies in the acoustics. Relax, and enjoy - your perception of Dulcinea won't be of a Don Quixote homely townswoman, but of a beautiful album.
