FOUND SOUND: Harvey Danger have stumbled into the cult niche they should have settled into 10 years ago. |
“If you believe in fate and things of that sort, it’s hard to see the trajectory of Harvey Danger as anything except a tragedy,” says frontman Sean Nelson, in between bites of omelet at a Seattle café just days before the band embark on their first East Coast tour in nearly six years. Given that he describes the Seattle foursome’s final months together before breaking up in 2001 as “horrid” and “miserable,” it’s remarkable that Harvey Danger re-formed, as they did last year to record a third full-length, Little by Little . . ., for their own label. That the disc has now been reissued by Kill Rock Stars and the band are on their way to play Great Scott on October 5 is practically a miracle.
The Harvey Danger story is a music-industry cliché. As a scrappy young band, they recorded their debut for a few thousand bucks and slid it out on a small indie label. A hip local radio station soon threw “Flagpole Sitta” into heavy rotation, and it became a regional hit. Major labels flocked with checkbooks open; before long, 1998’s Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? (Slash/Warner Bros.) was making national waves. They became the alt-rock poster boys of the moment, selling tens of thousands of records a week.
“I was miserable,” Nelson recalls. “We were all miserable, and we didn’t like what we were doing. We put all our focus on what it would be like when we made our second record, but that experience was so traumatic that it really did feel like we were being tested in some way.” That second album, 2000’s King James Version, was released to little fanfare and dismal sales. Soon after its release and a disastrous promotional tour, Harvey Danger disbanded.
“I felt like we were defeated,” Nelson continues. “But after about three years we got it in our heads to write a song together because it might be a fun thing to do. And it instantly clicked again.” Indeed, Little by Little . . . is a meticulous, mature work that holds out the hope Harvey Danger won’t be remembered as a one-hit wonder. Sounding less grunge-snotty than “Flagpole Sitta,” the new tunes flirt with jazzy vocals and theatrical melodies. The cynical ire that defined the first two albums hasn’t dissolved, but it’s more finely tuned, and delivered more precisely at moralists and bastards of all stripes.
And these days, cashing in is not high on the Harvey Danger agenda. Nelson allows, “If there was cash to be made, we’d take it. But there’s nothing to cash in on.” After sinking thousands of their own dollars into recording and flying themselves to South by Southwest last year to play a well-attended but fruitless showcase, the frustrated band opted to give the album away, and they made all of its tracks available as free downloads on their Web site. The experiment was a success. After thousands of copies had been downloaded, a limited CD pressing sold out, and they ended up needing the services of Kill Rock Stars to keep up with demand.
