Harvey Danger: Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?

The great thing about music is that time isn't really much of a thing. A CD is produced in a certain place in time. It may well have represented how we perceived those times, or even defined them. Then the album's time passes and if it isn't one of those rarefied classics of the time, or some kind of kitsch curiosity, it will probably be forgotten. If you still have your copy, you might dig it out and go "I liked this?" More likely, you lost it over the years. The song will crop up one day in a commercial and you'll go "I think I had that one."

But time goes by, and you forget the late-90's (because you were 12 at the time) so your idea of the era is a bit skewed by Sugar Ray and residual Backstreet Boy hate. Out of context, the album may even become something of a gem, because even if it was unremarkable for the time, it seems a lot stronger than a lot of the stuff you're hearing on the radio, and what people are buying in your store. Plus, you have a music blog and you've gotta write about something. Okay, this is getting weirdly specific. Maybe you can't relate.

In the late 90's, albums like Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone were routine. They were cranked out by the barrel, spun out exactly one single for use in every movie trailer that year, then forgotten. I don't want to get too deep into the hows and whys of "one-hit wonderdom." Some bands have it, some don't, and you can't quite put your finger on why. Some bands are one hit wonders despite having numerous. Bush had a ton of songs on the radio but I can't be bothered to remember any of them. Smash Mouth will forever be the beloved lunkheads behind "All Star" even though "Walking On The Sun" is due for a Serious Contenders treatment. And "Flagpole Sitta" was in the credits for that Katie Holmes movie with Cyclops. And you've been humming it every once in a while ever since, even though you can't remember any of the words but "I'm not sick, but I'm not well..." "Flagpole" is in fact an excellent song. Sean Nelson, the singer for this band, can rattle off long-winded, clever (and cleverly-worded) observational lyrics faster than the audience can process, which is probably why this is a song I can listen to 8 times in a row. His anti-establishment rambling is perfect punk, and he's highly literate, seeming to actually know the meanings and proper usages of all the words he uses, being smarter than the room by a half and too smart for his own good, finally summing it up in that infectious chorus.



Most of the album is nearly as good. The opening track, "Carlotta Valdez" is a motor-mouthed summary of the entire plot of the Aflred Hitchcock classic Vertigo. This entire premise for a song spells out how good the band's songwriters are at writing relationship songs from an unconventional angle (chorus: "Carlotta! Carlotta Valdez! / Carlotta Valdez, I will make you her!") Like most of the album, it has less of an angsty post-grunge vibe and more of a wry jangle-pop feel. They're smart enough to see a lot of problems, not smart enough to be certain of the solutions, and definitely not interested in taking action.

They take the nuanced approach on a lot of the tunes. "Wooly Muffler" has a real one-on-one feel to begin with, before expanding into that good harsh feeling. Again, you get these great, character-laden lines like "Hands can grow together / If you're not careful or grateful or whatever / And I never cared much too much to begin with..." and "If you've got greatness in you / Why don't you do us all a favour and keep it to yourself?" "Private Helicopter" builds on a story of reacquainting with old loves, old friends, and wondering why you lost touch and what went wrong: "I'm on a hovercraft to Paris with my former best friend / We have to get to the cinematheque. / We're not alone but no-one speaks English, so we're free / To look into each other's minds... I miss talkin' to you." "Jack The Lion" is one of the better songs I've heard about sitting by a dying man's bedside.

It goers on. There are a few really good ballads, mostly building on a pop-ready quiet-to-loud formula, like "Problems and Bigger Ones," which goes from a whisper to one of the louder, more cathartic-seeming moments of the album. And because Nelson's vocal character is so clear, that know-it-all nebbish who is nonetheless powerless in his own life, it really comes off as genuine. Their ability to go from one end of the spectrum to the other, like how they take the use Vertigo as a romantic example, shows the range they cover, moving between moods while still playing within the same genre all the time. Even the lesser songs at least produce interesting lyrics set to catchy tunes: "Old Hat" has "Disembodies ringlets of hair that looks like yours," while "Terminal Annex" sings of feeling "Like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers." There are some albums where I completely skip talking about the lyrics, and here I've quoted half the tracks.

Not every album is tied to its time and place. Harvey still sounds comfortably late-90's, I'm not trying to claim they were ahead of their time, or even exactly that it "totally holds up, bro." If the trappings of the day irked you, they still will, although I don't know what's not to like. I can't even say if this was a good album from 1997, but I can definitely say, reviewing this 1997 album in 2012, I find it an incredibly welcoming listen. Its nuances hold up, its character shine through, and its musicianship is really strong, finding a way, as all great rock albums must, to adhere to a certain format while injecting something personal, something different. What you get here isn't just late-90's angst, but some real charm, something to keep you interested the whole way through.

Buy this album now: Amazon.com // Amazon.ca