If only the band name hadn\u2019t been so dumb, perhaps we would all have a different view of Toad the Wet Sprocket after all these years.<\/p>\n
Dulcinea <\/i>is the band\u2019s fourth album and their commercial and songwriting peak, the second of their two big \u201990s albums (Fear <\/i>came out in 1991 and had the hits \u201cAll I Want\u201d and \u201cWalk On The Ocean\u201d). By this time, the band had tamped down their early jangle-pop and rawer sound for something a bit more pop-rock and polished, and it hit as alt-rock was a defining musical force. People were gobbling up R.E.M. and Collective Soul and Counting Crows and Seven Mary Three and Candlebox, in addition to the grunge bands of the time, and Toad fit right into that sound.<\/p>\n
Divorced from that era\u2014taken on its own merits\u2014Dulcinea <\/i>is a good album, full of confident melancholy, thoughtful lyrics and great melodies that stick with the listener. \u201cSomething\u2019s Always Wrong\u201d was the first hit, a moody midtempo pop-rocker with some good vocal harmonies and lyrics about how tough it is to be a youth. The extended instrumental closer, with Glen Phillips wordlessly singing over top, is a necessary closer to the song. <\/p>\n
But that\u2019s only one of the great songs. \u201cListen\u201d and \u201cWoodburning\u201d are highlights, the former especially effective in a slow build to its power-chord climax. The best song, not only of this album but of Toad\u2019s entire career, is \u201cFall Down,\u201d which was played live for a while before recording; the wait was worth it, as it\u2019s one of the great alt-rock singles of the decade. <\/p>\n
The slower songs aren\u2019t musically exciting but are lyrically interesting, at least more so than other bands of the era; \u201cFly From Heaven\u201d describes the viewpoint of Jesus\u2019 brother and \u201cCrowing,\u201d a fan favorite, tackles relationship struggles. \u201cStupid\u201d and \u201cWindmills\u201d are rather average at best, while \u201cNanci\u201d is a deft country song that sounds out of place but somehow works in the runtime (it\u2019s a comparison between singers Nanci Griffith and Loretta Lynn, and why not?). <\/p>\n
Things lose steam after \u201cFall Down,\u201d unfortunately; \u201cInside\u201d and \u201cBegin\u201d rehash sounds already done better elsewhere and \u201cReincarnation Song\u201d takes too long to get going, then plods along with Phillips yowling tunelessly, then ends with a feedback snarl. It\u2019s maybe an attempt to sound like Live on Throwing Copper <\/i>but it just doesn\u2019t work, at least for me.<\/p>\n
Still, the album stands as the last great thing Toad would ever do and a solid album that\u2019s more than the two hits it yielded. Worth checking out for fans of the era and those who turned on \u201cFall Down\u201d recently and thought hey, I always kinda liked that one. There\u2019s more where that came from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":34845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10785],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46712","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-toad-the-wet-sprocket","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46712"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}