By 2021, it was hard to believe that Toad The Wet Sprocket had been around for over thirty years, even if you were good at math. Under no pressure to anyone, they slowly pieced together another album in person and by e-mail, and Starting Now was primed for exposure post-pandemic. “Game Day” is a pleasantly tuneful strum, and while the lyrics in the chorus aren’t very convincing, the key change is clever. “Transient Whales” is typically obscure, but it hits all the right buttons to celebrate their legacy and stand with their best. “The Best Of Me” is the song that got all the attention, as it features prominent harmonies from Michael McDonald—yes, of the Doobie Brothers. But for the less-than-orthodox structure, this could be a new country song. Todd Nichols uses the same lead guitar tone throughout the album, almost as if it wouldn’t be them if it sounded different. We mention this here, because the title track is the most Toad-by-numbers song on the album, nicely contrasted with the more complex “In The Lantern Light”.
The second half gets poetic, or at least bookish, as “Hold On” quotes from the poem on the Statue of Liberty over a Counting Crows riff, while “Truth” calls out Frederick Douglass over a choogling country beat. There’s not much to “Slowing Down”, except that it’s a collaboration with Nashville songwriter Mando Saenz. There’s a jarring switch to the very processed “Dual Citizen”, with its robotic percussion and dated synths. That only makes the closing “Fever”, a maudlin plaint about ecology and injustice, punctuated by weepy vioilins, all the more epic at five minutes.
Not everything on Starting Now is memorable, but it sounds like a Toad album. Considering it was their first without longtime drummer Randy Guss, that’s important.
Toad The Wet Sprocket Starting Now (2021)—3
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