CD Review

You may not have realized they’d gone missing, but unjustly pegged one-hit-wonder Harvey Danger has returned with their first full-length album in five years, Little by Little. The follow-up to their excellent King James Version finds the reunited HD crew in fine form, with a fuller, more piano-driven sound that showcases, as always, front man Sean Nelson’s bombastic voice and bitingly clever songwriting.

Most people may remember Harvey Danger from the blazing chart and MTV success of “Flagpole Sitta,” the played-to-death single off of 1998’s Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? The Harvey Danger you’ll find on Little by Little has certainly come a long way from that brief flirtation with mainstream pop stardom.

Album opener “Wine, Women and Song” wastes no time in grabbing your attention. Right out of the gates, this track has you bobbing your head to Jeff Lin’s thrumming piano – something that you will do a lot as you listen to Little by Little. The pace only picks up from here, with “Cream and Bastards Rise,” a nasty little nice-guys-finish-last-and-even-your-friends-will-screw-you-over number.

The album takes a breather during “Little Round Mirrors,” one its best songs for the lilting melody and Nelson’s wounded, been-burned-before delivery of lines like: "And every time you crash, don’t you/want to find something you can love/half as much as you love all your little round mirrors?/See yourself reflected in one/There’s a hole in the middle you can’t seem to fill."

Little by Little does pick its chin back up with “Happiness Writes White,” a straight-forward love ditty written for Nelson’s wife, and rollicking pop tunes “Incommunicado” and “Cool James,” but the songs that really seem to stick are the down-tempo ones in the vein of “Little Round Mirrors,” such as “What You Live By.” This is yet another reflection on past mistakes, failures and lessons learned the hard way: "Like carnivores to carnal pleasures/So were we to desperate measures/Melting into stagnant puddles, beat down by the sun."

With Little by Little, Harvey Danger proves that they are indeed a band with staying power – let’s hope we don’t have to wait another five years for them to prove it again.