Harvey Danger. When I first got my hands on this album, I thought that the name sounded familiar. All through my trip on the bus back out through Hobart out to the soulless middle-class suburb that I call home, the name nagged at my memory. Who were these guys? I knew I'd heard of them before, and I figured that they might have been one of the hundreds of forgettable opening acts I've seen throughout my life at concerts and shows. Then, just coming around the corner to where my house is, I saw the crazy Vietnam vet running the flag up his flagpole. Then it hit me - Flagpole Sitta.

I'd just assumed that the band behind that particular song had faded away into nothing, another one-hit wonder with only enough pop smarts to make one decent song. Upon further examination, this particular impression is actually pretty accurate, since most of the rest of the album that the single was drawn from was pure pop-punk trash. Luckily, "Little By Little", while it doesn't have an obvious smash hit single in it, is a decidedly more consistent and agreeable affair.

The band here bears almost no resemblance to the band that had that massive hit. For one, there is a lot of piano in this album, something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. The attitude behind the songs is also different, most of the aggressively smart-aleck posturing has gone, replaced by a much less irritating and humble examination of themselves. It's definitely not party music, but it's still a good listen.

Take the first track, Wine, Women and Song, which sounds positively restrained and melancholy. Perhaps reflecting on the rollercoaster ride provided from their unexpected hit song, frontman Sean Nelson muses "It did not take me long/ To figure I'd unlocked the door to happiness/ I figured wrong". War Buddies, on the other hand, isn't nearly as in your face with downhearted reflection, but it has a whole lot of melody to make up for it. On the other hand, Cream and Bastards Rise, the only song in this whole collection that sounds even remotely like the band of yore, with its smartarse pop-punk posing, is the weakest of the lot.

"Little By Little" might not propel the band into massive radio airplay again, but listening to the comparatively quiet songwriting on show here, I don't think that superstardom is what they want anymore. This album is more Ben Folds than Blink 182, and getting re-acquainted with the band after so long is like meeting a friend from high school that used to like lighting fires, only to discover he's gotten himself a responsible job looking after orphaned kittens. On the other hand, if you were somehow stuck under a rock when Harvey Danger were briefly the kings of the world, and you like well-written, mature songwriting, this could be your kind of thing.