Gin Blossoms & Toad The Wet Sprocket, Medford 8/14/24

The bands’ songs represented the brighter side of the ’90s, and they more than held up during a boisterous double bill in Medford.

Robin Wilson, left, sings as the Gin Blossoms perform during the NBA Western Conference Finals in 2021. The band joined Toad the Wet Sprocket in Medford Tuesday. AP Photo/Matt York

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

With their jangling guitars and the throaty yelps of their frontmen drawing more from R.E.M. than Nirvana, the Gin Blossoms and Toad The Wet Sprocket were supposed to be the brighter counterprogramming to the grumbling weight of grunge. But there were darker undercurrents that ran through both bands, complicating the picture and offering a lot of appeal to listeners who were (or worried about being) screwups but still worked to make sure they got through college in four years.

And if those four years happened to fall within the first half of the 1990s, then having both bands on the same bill Tuesday at Medford’s Chevalier Theatre was like being microtargeted by the algorithm. Tossing in Vertical Horizon as an opener was practically gilding the lily, all those graduates having moved into the working world but still engaged enough in the alt-rock scene to enthusiastically sing along to every word of “Everything You Want” a quarter of a century later.

Toad The Wet Sprocket kicked off with the muted shimmer and concerned brow-furrow of “Something’s Always Wrong,” whose title could effectively serve as the band’s mission statement. Even in something like “California Wasted,” where the breezy, chest-out music served to disguise lyrics of aimlessness and uncertainty, their songs painted portraits of relationships or personalities that typically fell short of perfect and ate at the folks in question.

That tendency towards the over-intellectualized and dramatic always helped Toad The Wet Sprocket skew older (or at least an introverted teenager’s concept of what “older” might entail), and the band — now indisputably adults old enough to have kids in college themselves — sounded like they had matured into their songs. The pinging, insistent guitar figure of “The Moment” came across just this side of nervous, and “Windmills” was a soft anthem built on unsteady swells. And as the most recent song — 2021’s “Hold On” — made clear, the band maintained their knack for the hammer drop of a well-deployed minor chord.

But Toad The Wet Sprocket never took that as license for introspective glumness themselves. When Dean Dinning missed the entire second verse and chorus of “All I Want” to get a new bass hooked up after some unspecified technical issue with the one he started the song with, the band took it in good humor, with singer Glen Phillips taking it as an opportunity to point out just how crucial the song’s bassline was. Vertical Horizon’s Matt Scannell and the Gin Blossoms’ Robin Wilson took a verse each on a celebratory cover of R.E.M.’s “Driver 8.” And Toad The Wet Sprocket closed with “Fall Down,” smoothly driving and surging, so long as you didn’t listen to the words.

The same dynamic played out in much of the Gin Blossoms’ set as well, with songs like “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You” delving into self-loathing and recrimination. That carried its own momentum, which was good given the energy of the band. While nobody looked bored, neither did they seem especially fired up about the prospect of playing “Til I Hear It From You” for the 566th time, and Wilson walked around the stage with his microphone in his pocket until he needed to unsheathe his pleading quaver and led the crowd in clapping along as matter-of-factly as possible. It all suggested that they trusted that their songs would get them where they needed to go, so they didn’t have to put a lot into them.

And they were right. If “Hold Me Down” could have used more punch, it didn’t lack for drive, and the diffident pop pleasures of “Allison Road” easily shone through. With Bill Leen’s bass providing a sneaky undertow, “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 downshift like “As Long As It Matters” had a built-in energy nonetheless, capped by an audience member bellowing “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 gleam of the recorded version, it got where it needed to go as the Gin Blossoms dug in.

Setlist for Toad The Wet Sprocket and Gin Blossoms at the Chevalier Theatre, Aug. 13, 2024

Toad The Wet Sprocket

Something’s Always Wrong
Woodburning
California Wasted
The Moment
Come Down
Hold On
Inside
Good Intentions
Windmills
Crazy Life
All I Want
Nightingale Song
Driver 8 (R.E.M. cover, with the Gin Blossoms’ Robin Wilson and Vertical Horizon’s Matt Scannell)
Walk On The Ocean
Fall Down