Revenge of the Nerds

Toad the Wet Sprocket, the folk-laced pop-rock band from Santa Barbara, has sold more than 3 million records. Two of its albums--1994’s “Dulcinea” and 1991’s “Fear”--have gone platinum. Yet people have trouble naming its most popular songs: “Walk on the Ocean,” “All I Want,” “Fall Down,” or “Something’s Always Wrong.”

And Toad’s summer jaunt on the touring HORDE festival proved the band has barely registered a blip on the national radar.

“Every day after our show, someone would come up and say, ‘Man, I didn’t know those [songs] were you guys,’ ” said lead singer-songwriter Glen Phillips during a recent phone interview from his home. “I think people do know and like our songs. . . . They just have no idea who the hell we are.”

Phillips believes he knows the source of the problem.

“It’s probably our awful name [an obscure Monty Python reference]--and the fact that we don’t have any particularly gripping stories for the media to grab,” he said. “We’re really non-cutting edge, and, really, that’s fine with all of us. We’re pretty much a straight-ahead rock band that writes songs that mean something to us. We hope to model our career more on what Tom Petty has done, rather than on any flavor-of-the-month kind of band.”

Toad the Wet Sprocket, which will appear Saturday night at the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana as part of a three-week tour of the West, was formed about 11 years ago by four self-described “theater nerds” who decided it’d be cooler to be in a band.

Although still uncool, the quartet--also featuring original members Todd Nichols on guitar, Dean Dinning on bass and Randy Guss on drums--put out two albums independently before signing with Columbia Records in 1989. They toured relentlessly in support of three more records over the next seven years.

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The group’s latest album, “Coil,” released in May, continues in the Toad tradition, with imagery-driven lyricism and jangly, folk-based musical textures that create wistful moods. And there’s no mistaking that pervading mellowness, another Toad trademark.

“I think subtlety is underrated, while rage has become grossly overrated,” said Phillips, 26, who has been criticized for his lack of onstage charisma. “Like my theater friends tell me, you can get reviewed as long as naked people appear in your play or there’s some kind of brutal junkie involved. You know, the idea of the [Quentin] Tarantino kind of shock value.”

“I’ll take beauty over guts any day. I think it lasts longer. I mean, that’s why Van Morrison is so great. . . . You can be thoughtful and optimistic and still have some depth.”

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The band does offer a few subtle yet significant departures on the new album. Several new songs take a much more direct approach, with narratives replacing stream-of-consciousness structures. Despite Phillip’s affinity for introspection, two selections with electric guitars wailing flat-out rock.

“Some of it is the kind of thing we’d occasionally written in the past,” he explained. “But we’d go, ‘This doesn’t sound like us.’ We’d gotten in the habit of falling back on what’s easiest for us to do.

“What we’re looking at now is stepping out of compartments. I think ‘Coil’ presents us more squarely than anything we’ve ever done. It’s undiluted and more easily digestible because the songs aren’t so veiled, musically or lyrically. I was ready to do something a little less murky on all levels, so I started by dispensing with such unpleasantries as metaphor.”

“Coil’s” highlights include two explosive, politically charged numbers--the pro-immigrant “Amnesia” and anti-materialistic “Throw It All Away”--plus the out-of-character, sexually driven “Desire,” featuring these lyrics: “I want to break out / I want to dive in / to lose myself in sin.”

The album’s sense of renewal stems partly from a yearlong cooling-off period prior to its recording.

“We’d been touring constantly since ‘89, spending no more than six months at a time at home,” Phillips said. “We’d all been missing that groundedness, and I know I was curious what it’d be like to actually have a life.”

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Meanwhile, Phillips’ family quickly doubled as wife Laurel gave birth to Zola and Sophia, now 9 and 23 months old, respectively.

“It’s hard being on the road, away from my family for long stretches of time,” Phillips said with a sigh. “It’s definitely a weird life. Yet when I am home, I get to spend the kind of quality time that most fathers never get the chance to. . . . So there is a positive side to this job.”

* Toad the Wet Sprocket performs Saturday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. The Pushers open. 8 p.m. $22.50-$24.50. (714) 957-0600.