Gin Flowers and Toad The Wet Sprocket, Medford 08/14/24

Gin Blossoms and Toad The Wet Sprocket, with Vertical Horizon, at the Chevalier Theatre, Medford, Tuesday, August 13, 2024

With their slapping guitars and guttural vocal screams more inspired by REM than Nirvana, the Gin Blossoms and Toad The Wet Sprocket were meant to be a brighter counter-program to the grating weight of grunge. But there were darker undercurrents in both bands, complicating the picture and offering plenty of appeal to listeners who were (or feared they were) failures but were still working to ensure they finished college in four years.

And if those four years were in the early to mid-1990s, then having both bands on the same bill Tuesday at Medford’s Chevalier Theatre was like being microtargeted by the algorithm. Opening with Vertical Horizon was practically a godsend, with all those graduates having entered the workforce but still sufficiently involved in the alternative rock scene to enthusiastically sing every word of “Everything You Want” a quarter-century later.

Toad The Wet Sprocket opened with the hushed shimmer and anxious frown of “Something’s Always Wrong,” whose title could effectively serve as the band’s mission statement. Even in a song like “California Wasted,” where the light, chest-thumping music served to mask aimless, uncertain lyrics, their songs portrayed relationships or personalities that were usually far from perfect and that were eating away at the people in question.

That streak of intellectualism and drama has always helped Toad The Wet Sprocket age (or at least get a sense of what “age” means to an introverted teenager), and the band—now unmistakably adults old enough to have kids of their own in college—seemed to have matured in their songs. The insistent, percussive guitar of “The Moment” was a touch edgy, and “Windmills” was a gentle anthem built on unsteady accelerations. And as the most recent song—2021’s “Hold On”—makes clear, the band has retained its knack for the well-deployed minor-chord hammer drop.

But Toad The Wet Sprocket never took this as an excuse to indulge in introspective gloom. When Dean Dinning missed the entire second verse and chorus of “All I Want” to plug in a new bass after an unspecified technical problem with the one he’d started the song with, the band took it in good humor, with singer Glen Phillips taking the opportunity to emphasize how crucial the song’s bassline was. Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon and Robin Wilson of Gin Blossoms each took a verse on a celebratory cover of REM’s “Driver 8.” And Toad The Wet Sprocket finished with “Fall Down,” a song that rolls along gently and surges, as long as you don’t listen to the lyrics.

The same dynamic played out in much of the Gin Blossoms’ set, too, with songs like “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You” exploring self-loathing and recrimination. It carried its own momentum, which was a good thing given the band’s energy. While no one seemed bored, they also didn’t seem particularly excited about playing “Til I Hear It From You” for the 566th time, and Wilson paced the stage with his mic in his pocket until he needed to whip out his pleading eighth note and get the crowd to applaud as simply as possible. All of this suggested that they trusted that their songs would get them where they needed to go, so they didn’t have to put much effort into them.

And they were right. While “Hold Me Down” could have been punchier, it didn’t lack drive, and the coy pop pleasures of “Allison Road” shone through with ease. With Bill Leen’s bass providing a sly undercurrent, “Hands Are Tied” culminated in guitarists Jesse Valenzuela and Scott Johnson throwing licks at each other before Valenzuela began an extended solo as the rhythm section charged harder.

Even a slower version like “As Long As It Matters” still had an intrinsic energy, capped by an audience member yelling “THAT’S MY WIFE’S FAVORITE, THANK YOU!” afterwards. And while the mix made “Til I Hear It From You” more melancholy than the shimmering glow of the recorded version, it served its purpose when the Gin Blossoms sat down.

Toad The Wet Sprocket and Gin Blossoms setlist at Théâtre Chevalier, August 13, 2024

Wet Pinion Toad

• There is always something wrong
• Pyrography on wood
• California Wasted
• The moment
• To come down
• Wait
• Inside
• Good intentions
• Windmills
• Crazy life
• All I want
• Song of the nightingale
• Driver 8 (REM cover, featuring Robin Wilson of Gin Blossoms and Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon)
• Walking on the ocean
• To fall

Gin flowers

• I follow you down
• Lost Horizons
• As long as it matters
• Facing the Darkness
• Until I fall
• Hold me down
• Hands are tied
• Allison Road
• I found out something about you
• Hey jealousy
• Until I heard it from you

BIS:

• A Million Miles Away (The Plimsouls cover)

You can reach Marc Hirsh at [email protected] or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.