March 9, 2009: Taylor Hanson Is Cool. Groan.

When I saw Hanson last fall at the Nokia Theater in New York City, I noticed two out-of-the ordinary things. First, Adam Schlesinger was standing five feet behind us for the entire set. Second of all, the place was filled with dudes.

The former was cool—I love Fountains of Wayne as much as the next pop-addled post-grad—but not altogether surprising. There have been rumors for years that Adam was on the short list of producers considered for Middle of Nowhere. (Imagine, for a minute, what that album would have sounded like. Hell, I’d still like to hear it.) Plus, he also wrote a Christmas song for Snowed In that Hanson eventually rejected because they thought the concept was too immature. It’s called “I Want an Alien for Christmas” and Fountains of Wayne recorded it themselves shortly thereafter. It’s quirky and fun and what Hanson probably couldn’t articulate at the time—because who can, when you’re 14—is that the band probably couldn’t have performed it with any of the necessary cheek. Actually, cheek is still not quite Hanson’s specialty, but I get ahead of myself. But in short, it wasn’t all that weird seeing Adam at a Hanson show.

What was weirder was the second thing—the shear number of youngish, skinny-jeaned, modishly-coiffed boys loafing around the place. Now, I have nothing against youngish, skinny-jeaned, modishly-coifed boys. Because hey, I love the big blond one up front who’s busy forgetting the lyrics to the song he wrote. So why wouldn’t I love this motley collection?

Well. Here’s why. I don’t want to share.

Hanson is mine. And they’ve been mine since before I had an SAT score or a driver’s license. And for most of my years on this particular side of the fan fence, Hanson has not been cool and has not been suitable for anyone who is or pretends to be cool. So to suddenly seen these poor bastions of cool—the specimen known as the sadly posing early-twenty-something New York City male music fan—my heart kinda broke. For them, yes, because they’ll never know what we know. (Not until they’ve sat on a sidewalk for 12 hours or grown a vagina.) But also for us. Because, at this very late date in Hanson history, dear fellow fan, our ranks have been polluted.

Hanson has been around for so long and has made so much good music and are so much less depressing than the Jonas Brothers that they’ve actually become sort of cool.

Of course, Hanson themselves would probably see it the other way around. They undoubtedly see us as the pollution and the simpering male contingent as their late-arriving-but-true-target-demographic. What men love, after all, is still and will forever be more important, more legitimate, more artistically valid than what women love. Add that poison cherry to your bitter sundae, Hanson fan. You know, right after you spend a few minutes contemplating the fact that they married three of us.

And in a way, Taylor’s solo project—Tinted Windows, the single most exciting news to come out of camp Hanson since the release of Underneath—is, in a way, the fruition of all that. Hanson’s clamoring for legitimate musical friends, good notice from the mainstream press, more diverse fans, dissociation from its teenie bopper image. Tinted Windows grants Hanson—or at least Taylor—those things and more. And I don’t mean to be totally grumpy about it. These things are great for Hanson, whose fan base dwindles more and more as the years pass. (I went to a show at a small theater in Asbury Park, New Jersey a few months ago that was a quarter full. It was startling. And awfully quiet.) It’s also a good thing for Taylor, who, let’s be real here, could occasionally use some new context. Ike and Zac are splendid. They give to Taylor what only family can—subtle contrast, the inexplicable voodoo of history and blood. But he’s musically out of their league as both a singer and a songwriter, and he always has been. And let me horrify you some more: He probably knows it. And they probably do too.

It’s funny, of course, that the music created by Taylor’s new superband would seem so inconsequential. The first Tinted Windows songs are fun but nothing more. The guitars roar, they do. And the production makes the most of Taylor’s prickly tenor. But nothing I’ve heard so far soars like “Runaway Run” or weeps like “Believe” or jumps out of the speakers like “Something Going Round”. But then, that stuff really isn’t all that cool, is it.

Labels: concerts, coolness, solo projects, taylor, tinted windows

Posted by Laura Motta | 10:41 PM | 10 comments | link |