The Gravel Pit, Serpent Umbrella (DeeVeeUs Records)

I saw The Gravel Pit play live over a hundred times back in the 1990s, as they honed their quirky hard rock in such New Haven venues as the Poco Loco, Cafe Nine, Toad’s Place, Cheri’s, the German Club at the University of New Haven and the old Rudy’s Bar & Grill (across the street from the band’s practice space in the Rochdale Co-op). The band moved to Boston, which they ruled for a few years, and even gained a touch of national fame. Other projects intervened—frontman/songwriter Jed Parish’s solo albums, bassist Ed Valauskas’ day job at Q Division studios, the club rock band The Gentlemen which most of the Pit took part in—and The Gravel Pit gradually vanished.

This reunion album is well overdue, since the band members have stayed friends over the years and done a number of live reunion shows. This is The Gravel Pit’s first recording since they contributed a cover of “Closer to the Wall” to the 2009 Mark Mulcahy tribute project Ciao My Shining Star, and the first full-length Gravel Pit album since 2001’s Mass Avenue Freeze Out.

At first listen, Serpent Umbrella sounds closer to a Jed Parish solo album with full band backing than it does to classic Gravel Pit. That has something to do, I’m guessing, to the band members now being middle-aged. This was always a smart, literate band, but in its heyday it was also tough and bombastic, the pithy lyrics shouted over mighty power chords. Jed uses his falsetto more than his yowl here, but the songs remain intelligent and excitable.

The numbers that remind me most of The Gravel Pit I knew way back when are “Crybaby Vampire” (latest in a line of supernaturally themed Pit songs such as “Teenage Witch”), “Glimpses of the Underdog” (which has the quiet menace of “Time to Leave the Cradle” and other reflections on cruel society) and “Power Broker Blues” (an electrioc blues-rock work-out which reminds me that in the band’s infancy The Gravel Pit used to love covering “Tom Sawyer” by Rush).

On earlier albums, there always were songs that started slowly and lyrically. Many of them changed tone and became blaring anthemic rock bludgeons. Most of the songs on Serpent Umbrella stay on the softer side. Nothing wrong with that, and the production quality is better than on many of the older Pit albums.

You can hear Jed Parish’s still-impressive, still-defiant lyrics, still bitter about politics, corporate power games and upper class mores. You can assess the detail in Lucky Jackson’s guitar work for a change. You can admire the steady rhythm section of Ed Valauskas and drummer Pete Caldes. And you can imagine how The Gravel Pit might have progressed as a band without a 12-year interruption between albums. Would they have mellowed naturally and gradually from disk to disk, yielding this same result? Would they have become grizzled hard rockers, using cheaper sonic tricks to exhort crowds to get up and listen? Again, nothing wrong with this thoughtful new Gravel Pit album. But for those who saw this band in their explosive youth, this is like a ‘90s New Wave “September Song.”