Three Car Garage
2005
Best Of: Live And Electric
About This Album
The Best of Hanson: Live and Electric is not a compilation; it's a live album, capturing the band on their supporting tour for their 2004 album Underneath. It's not their first live album -- about a year and a half after their 1997 major-label debut, they released Live from Albertane, which was a little fast for a live record, but it does illustrate just how crazy Hanson mania was in the late '90s. Here in 2005, Hanson not only have a larger repertoire to draw from, but they're a different band: they're older, stronger, road-tested, and tougher. They're a mature band now, usually for better, but sometimes for worse, as in on their opening gambit of covering Radiohead's crawling "Optimistic." It's a move that practically begs for the band to be taken seriously, to not be thought of as teen pop sensation, and the self-consciousness of the cover is awkward. But that's the only false note on an album that's tight, lean, and quite entertaining. Every song here, whether it's a newer tune or their old hits "Where's the Love" and "MMM Bop," is given an arrangement that is simultaneously stripped down and opened up, giving the trio -- augmented by Pete Griffin on bass and Aaron Kaplan on electric guitar -- plenty of space to jam.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,7,9 and 13)

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