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Title: colorless Pale?
Review: Toad the Wet Sprocket was one of those bands I loved when I was younger that just seemed dull to me as I became aware of more and more music. Yet I still return to those albums sometimes for that quality of innocence in their spare guitar-driven progressive melodies, and so the band tends to be fairly innofensive and even dull at times, they have moments of real transcendence. That, at least, is what I found recently listening to Pale, which has its share of doggerel, but occasionally, there's a song like "Don't Go Away," which is ebullient and heartfelt, or "Liars Everywhere," which is as powerfully felt as any song of the REM-lite genre of prog-rock (if not any song by REM). This record doesn't always shine, but it's bare and moving where it counts.
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