Harvey Danger gets better little by little

You can't expect much from a band that hasn't released anything in five years, especially when their most popular song gained notoriety for being in a number of awful movie soundtracks.\nLeave it to Harvey Danger to do something entirely unexpected.\nLittle By Little... the band's first release since 2000's underexposed and underappreciated King James Version, gets almost everything right with an intelligent album that shows a more mature, less cynical side of the post-grunge quartet. \nThen again, post-grunge doesn't really work to describe them anymore. The tag "indie" doesn't quite fit them either, despite the record label. They're doing what they always did, granted, but with so much more variety and experimentation it's hard to even classify them as rock on some songs.\nTake, for example, the opening track, "Wine, Women, and Song." Are we greeted with blaring, fuzzy guitars like in Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone or KJV? Nope, instead we're met with pianos and singing reminiscent of old showtunes or vaudeville acts. "Little Round Mirrors" sounds like Coldplay if Coldplay incorporated British horns into their act and "What You Live By" could fit on any old western movie's soundtrack. \nIn short, there's a lot of experimentation here. And it rarely falls short of expectations. The Harvey Danger in this album is not the Harvey Danger of 1997, and while many fans feared exactly that, it is by no means a bad thing.\nOf course, music alone doesn't make a good Harvey Danger album. The lyrics are infused with the band's classic wit, despairing or otherwise. Singer Sean Nelson takes the listener through the album with a smirk and a kind-of-whiny, sort-of-geeky swagger that, if given a close listen, is impossible not to grin at.\nA person doesn't need to be an English geek to get a kick out of Little By Little..., however: It's still got several songs so catchy they could be a thinking man's Top 40 material. After seeing "Flagpole Sitta" defiled by so many god-awful movies and nineties pop compilations, it's hard to imagine hearing "Moral Centralia" on the latest David Schwimmer vehicle.\nUnfortunately, Little By Little... is on a limited release schedule and, at the time of this review, it was only available in one store in Indiana, on the north side of Indianapolis. However, the album is up for purchase on the band's Web site, www.harveydanger.com, and will be released for free by the band on that same site on 27. However you get it, though, be sure to give it a listen. You won't be disappointed.