167. Song Nos. 2,534 and 2,535: “Diminishing Returns,” Harvey Danger
Little by Little, 2005; Dead Sea Scrolls, 2009

Little by Little is probably my favorite Harvey Danger album, an almost-flawless collection of songs that proved the band always deserved more acclaim and attention than their one hit got them. But then the post-mortem compilation Dead Sea Scrolls and I crossed paths and I actually felt a little personally spited when I realized their last studio release got saddled with the lesser recording of “Diminishing Returns,” because there is no universe where the demo version included on the retrospective album isn’t everything this song is meant to be. For Little by Little, an album that comes stomping in with some of the most angrily smashed-out piano plunking ever, to trail out in a quietly recoiling five-minute crawl toward the end is a shame when an unpolished gem of a proximal banger exists.

The demo recording might be less thoughtfully composed but it’s all the better for being raw, emotional and not afraid to scream about it. The studio version never really felt like the outro Little by Little deserves, burdening its lyrical frustration with resignation and acceptance rather than validating it with the cynical recasting the demo version bitingly deployed.

These lyrics have a lot going on no matter where you find your deconstruction ingress-hole. The personal journey of a radicalization that goes either way plays much like how the growth of a community softens its nuance as increasing popularity inherently obliterates intimacy by needing to account for a broader range’s inclusion; rather than making one thing appeal to a greater mass, though, you’re reconciling a wealth of personal experience with a singular identity and belief. Neither are comfortable processes. Both should sound a little petulant, betrayed and uncomfortable to sound authentic, and both versions have always inarguably justified their very different pains.

There’s an interpersonal level at play, too, which I didn’t really stop to appreciate until I listened to these songs back-to-back for a while. I still vastly prefer the demo’s acerbic rock but the whole opening salvo feels so different between each version and establishes their varying flavors of underlying bitterness so precisely that I’m pissed off I was caught up in superficialities for so long that I missed the point completely.

But there’s no magic like being reintroduced to the right song at the 100-percent perfect time. I listened to both versions over and over for a few cycles and was increasingly delighted in the moody differences that make each version work and how it was more fitting than I gave it credit for to bookend Little by Little with its first track’s outwardly indignant annoyance and its version of “Diminishing Returns” turning that frustration inward over recognizing the difference between ending a relationship and temporarily giving up on someone until they’re ready to change, whether it’s for their benefit or yours, no matter how long it takes.

While I refuse to blithely regard these as bona-fide post-pandemic times we’re living in, I think we’re at the societal point where we at least know who’s been navigating these batshit 19 months with caution on par with ours, who we trust enough to spend unmasked time with, who we actually, genuinely miss. And while I also think there’s been no better natural parting of ways as a pandemic that has exposed who’s truly driven by their own needs instead of the good of the whole, it’s also highlighted how many wonderful people have been undeservedly back-burnered in pursuit of friendships that, in retrospect, demanded a disproportionate amount of energy to keep going when they gave so little in return. It’s also nicely illustrated who else has been stewing in introspective isolation and emerged a little more mature, a little more compassionate, and a little more aware of what their next chapter needs more of.

After a 2021 marked by my best friend moving half a continent away and my husband and I growing farther apart from his core group of friends who have been like family for more than a decade, I have been obsessed with reading about the pandemic’s affect on friendships to feel a little less isolated and like I’m the only one who put all my eggs in the wrong basket when it came to prioritizing my family of the heart, which is somehow harder to deal with than cutting off all ties with my actual nuclear family more than 11 years ago. But in the past year, we’ve reconnected with a number of mutual friends and two of his closest buddies after some both deliberately and accidentally cultivated radio silence that far precedes the first whispers of COVID, and it’s been kind of amazing to find out that sometimes you do just need a little distance to realize you’ve been growing in the same direction but taking different routes to the same destination this whole time.

And after a few not-quite-infinite-repeat rounds among the dualities of meeting at the point of diminishing returns with both the introspective resignation befitting the hardest ’til-we-meet-agains and the difficult realization that sometimes it’s best to just walk away from someone in quiet anger before you give voice to weaponized grievances you can’t come back from even though they’ve refused to hear anything else you’ve tried as gentler course corrections, there’s some comfort in knowing that friendships have always been this malleable and apt to detour through some places both parties need to roam alone for a little while, and how even in a time rife with uncertainty that’s got us all out of sorts and a little squirrelly, goodbye certainly isn’t a parting of ways that has to last forever.