Toad the Wet Sprocket Frontman Glen Phillips on New Constellation

For those of a certain age in the early ’90s, Toad the Wet Sprocket and their debut album Bread & Circus evoke certain memories. Call it teen angst, if you want. For a band formed after freshman year of high school and essentially a group of teens making music that resonates with other teens, it’s a fitting a label as any.

But as Toad grew up the angst fell away some and the output up until their 1998 break up holds a particular spot in the hearts of those who grew up along side it. Those who, now, “rule the world,” as frontman Glen Phillips told American Songwriter with a laugh, and have the power to program Toad’s hits to be played in supermarkets and retail stores nationwide.

But for those who, like Phillips himself, cannot or do not want to revisit their 16 year old selves with the Toad back catalog (“I get why people get ’em… I just cannot handle seeing myself at that age, that exposed”), there’s good news to be found with the August 4th release of New Constellation, the first record from the newly reunited and a little bit revamped Toad the Wet Sprocket.

It was a bit of a process, testing out the band dynamic and exploring new songwriting styles: New Constellation marks both the first time the band has collaborated with outside writers, in this case, close-friend and utility player Jonathan Kingham on “Golden Age,” and the increased compositional involvement of bassist Dean Dinning. “Dean and Todd became a songwriting pair kind of after Toad broke up,” explains Phillips, citing “California Wasted” as a particularly strong contribution, “that melody I love, it was the first melody of Dean’s I’d written to and that was awesome to do.”

Writing for New Constellation was, more than anything, the defining difference in the band’s process. Composed on and off over a few years, Phillips felt a sense of freedom in a new “project-oriented” style and cites the benefits of having “some kind of end in mind… a few rules I need to follow or a manifesto I have to kind of go by for a little while.” Essentially, it’s much easier to write towards an idea than try to filter or force an idea into a Toad song. “The nice thing about doing this album was we could write something for the Toad record, and then write something for something else, so it wasn’t like three years of constant woodshedding,” says Phillips, “I was writing, at least for part of it, stuff that I thought would be fun to play live, that would have more tempos and have a lot of harmonies.”

The album marks new textual territory as well. To call it adult angst would undermine the subtletly with which Phillips approaches his subject matter, but when pressed for a theme, he reflects that, now in his 40s, he “kept coming to the conclusion that it’s not about what happens or not about the story but just about being aware, being awake and being grateful. That over and over happiness seems to come down to a choice and a practice more than it comes down to getting what you want. Getting what you want is very, very secondary or tertiary.” Attempting to get the jump on a revelation his mother-in-law had at 60 (“I remember her coming over to the house one day. She was all ecstatic and said “my dream died, I finally realized I like life the way it is, screw the dream!””), Phillips is set on looking at what you have and “learning to love it and deciding to love it.”

It’s also about, to a certain degree, burying the past, which ties nicely to the story behind the band’s late ’90s break up. “I won’t go into great detail,” Phillips laughs (the man laughs a lot, which can only be to the credit of his new mindset), “but I mean, we needed to break up.” It’s understandable really: the band was young and unprepared, the success fast, the arguments petty. “All considered, we were probably doing a lot better than a lot of bands do,” says Phillips, “but we all needed a break and we all needed perspective.” Now, with enough years passed and experience gained, the band reformed with unprecedented willingness.

The first step in their reunion came with the re-recording and release of much of their early discography. As much for royalties reasons (“Sony were very good to us, but at this point, we’re not really on their priority list”) and expediency (“Sony lawyers may or may not get back in time…Especially with television, if someone wants it you have 24 hours at most to say yes…this way they can just give us a call and we can say yes, very, very quickly”), Phillips believes that the experience was a key confidence builder for the band. “To go in and record mixes ourselves, and to see how quickly we could work and how well we could get along in the studio situation. I think it was really a great step to that as well.”

Those steps paid off and even though New Constellation drops next week, it’s already been met with overwhelming support through Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Kickstarter campaign, which offers deluxe and vinyl options, in addition to the regular download format. “The enthusiasm before people heard it was great,” says Phillips, “and the enthusiasm after people have heard it has been even better.”