Vancouver Sun:

TOAD THE WET SPROCKET
In Light Syrup
Columbia/Sony  * * *  (three stars)

	Toad the Wet Sprocket deserve more credit than they've been given 
in their decade-long recording career.  Long-time underdogs of the 
alternative scene, their tight, no-gimmicks sound was always upstaged by 
flavour-of-the-month trash.
	That's what made them so likable:  they just kept doing what they 
did best:  writing melodically clean, lyrically compelling songs that no 
one seemed to notice.
	And then came Counting Crows, opening up a spot in the heavens 
for relatively simple rock forms and giving Toad the Wet Sprocket a new 
lease on life.
	Now their music will be included on "Friends" episodes and the 
cast will be recruited for their Good Intentions video.
	This isn't good news for old-time Toad fans, but at least it 
created projects like In Light Syrup, a retrospective of lost songs that 
never made it onto Toad's previous four studio records.  
	Packed with flavourful offerings like Little Heaven, a peachy 
ballad with soaring harmonies and a cathartic scream of a lead vocal in 
the chorus, and Hobbit on the Rocks, an American tribute to Elvis 
Costello's phrasing, In Light Syrup doesn't feel like a wimpy selection 
of B-sides.
	It feels like a reclamation of the trash heap that almost 
suffocated these princes in waiting.