LOVE IT: Hanson - Shout It Out.

Hanson is one of those boy bands you can’t believe you were so in love with once upon a time. But once you turn the radio past 94.9FM and a snippet of “MMMbop” squeezes its way back into your heart, you forget all your inhibitions and crank up that jam. Mentally, you’re mentally back in middle school, each lyric rolling miraculously off your tongue and making your morning commute bouncy and carefree.


With their eighth album, Shout It Out, the band of brothers has brought me back to that mental place with another batch of perfectly-packaged power pop cookies. It’s eerie that they don’t seem to have aged much, in looks or vocal ranges, since their breakthrough in 1996. Their music has always been about life and love through the eyes of someone much too young to be world-weary (what 10-year-old seriously knows anything about relationships, or cares enough to break the cootie shield?), but now it seems they have finally matured.

Issac, Taylor, and Zac are all grown up, inching towards their 30s, raising broods big enough to build their own commune, and somehow they have enough excess energy to run their own small record label, write, record, and tour endlessly with big smiles on their purdy boyish faces. This energy is boundless on Shout It Out. With nary a ballad amongst its 12 tracks, it oozes with peppy charm that teeters dangerously on the edge of syrupy preciousness, and after a while it leaves an over-processed taste in your mouth. Richard Simmons will be reaching and lifting to these, no doubt about it. Yet after clapping along to the adorably cheesy video for “Thinking ‘Bout Somethin” (see it below — and what’s Weird Al doing there?), I can’t help but enjoy it — at least in small increments. The guys seem to know it’s hokey but make no apologies and are having a blast.

Shout It Out will likely be shelved after a few weeks on your iPod rotation, but there isn’t much more refreshing to hear than three brothers still flawlessly whippin’ out their instruments to do what they love together. (released June 8 on their label, 3CG Records).

LEAVE IT: Rooney - Eureka.

If it had been another band, I would not have been as disappointed. But it was Rooney, and because I expected an explosion of greatness, I was let down big time. Rooney’s third album, Eureka – recorded and self-released independently by the band after breaking from Geffen — is moderately adequate radio pop/rock. Maybe if the guys didn’t focus on being bitter and juvenile, their tunes would be enjoyable. As it is, however, their usually carefully crafted orchestrations just come off as sounding paint-by-numbers.


No song on Eureka is memorable. I listened to it twice yesterday, and today I cannot recall a single melody. The songs are lacking essential lifeblood - this from a band who seamlessly meshed 60s, 70s, and 80s madness with such feeling on two stellar previous albums. The band says this is the proudest they’ve ever been of their music; some critics call Eureka their best yet. I just don’t hear that.

Many songs, including “Holdin’ On,” “All Or Nothing,” and “I Can’t Get Enough” are straight up boring. “Not In My House” is bombarding and creepy. “The Hunch” laughably recalls the theme song to “Duck Tales,” but the punchy horns are peppy enough to make it the album’s highlight.

Where is Rooney’s trademark affinity for skull-rippingly excellent pop hooks? Robert (brother of actor/musician Jason) Schwartzman and Co. have lost their oomph. They mindlessly adhere to the verse-chorus-verse method of songwriting, trading their let’s-enjoy-life-no-matter-what philosophy for flat rhymes that spew at The Man and the music machine. It doesn’t have to be all sunny skies, but if clear weather is what it takes for Rooney to make good music, perhaps they should have cooled off a while longer, instead of giving fans an explosion of mediocrity.

I was going to see them at Crowbar on July 9, but I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think I can take seeing cardboard cut-outs of a band I love.