All Their Fans Want

Toad the Wet Sprocket

With Bleu

Tonight, 8 p.m.

All ages

M

$20 in advance, $22 at door

… Toad the Wet Sprocket

With Bleu

Tonight, 8 p.m.

All ages

M

$20 in advance, $22 at door

(412) 261-4512

In 1998, Toad the Wet Sprocket fans everywhere despaired when the band announced its amicable breakup after 12 years. The rest of the world probably didn’t even notice, even though many of the band’s songs would be familiar to them. After Toad’s popularity peaked with 1991’s Fear and the top 10 single “All I Want,” the pop/rock act took almost three years to follow up with Dulcinea, whose hits “Something’s Always Wrong” and “Fall Down” received plenty of airplay but never matched the success of Fear. Toad recorded “Good Intentions” for the soundtrack to “Friends” and released a few more albums, but their 15 minutes of fame were up.

Since the breakup, those still loyal to the musicians have followed lead singer Glen Phillips and Lapdog, which contains other members of the band, on their less high-profile musical odysseys, praying that someday the breakup would end and the rest of the world could see what they were missing.

That day has come, even though it is destined to be short-lived. After performing a few shows together, the band chose to reunite for the P.S. Tour 2003, named for the retrospective album released post-breakup in 1999. On Wednesday, Toad devotees in Pittsburgh will have a chance to join those who can still attach a name to the poetic, harmony-laden tunes that danced through radios in the early- and mid-1990s.

The breakup and reunion illustrates the dichotomy that often drove the band’s sound. Phillips – who visited Pittsburgh in the fall at Club Cafe – has perfected a softer, acoustic sound, offset by Lapdog’s California guitar-driven rock. Phillips and Toad perfected versatility in songwriting, writing about everything from the imprisonment of Native American activist Leonard Peltier in “Crazy Life,” – which appeared on the soundtrack to cult movie “Empire Records” – to Phillips’ playful narrative “Drive By” about a young Ben Folds driving a car so his father could shoot the neighbors’ annoying dog.

Whether or not the reunion will stick, all who remember the early ’90s with nostalgia should take the rare opportunity to experience the full depth of one of the bands whose few singles never did justice to their phenomenal talent.