"Garage" Rock
Brothers Ike, Zac, and Taylor Hanson roll out a vintage -- to them, anyway -- heap of tracks. Once upon a time (okay, three years ago), back when they hadn't sold 5 million records and their career decisions weren't guided by record execs, the Hanson clan worked more like a family than a marketing machine. Which meant that Ike, the biggest, oldest brother, got to be the lead singer, while pre-teen-idols-to-be Taylor and Zac had to, for the most part, settle for backup duty.
Big mistake. On "3 Car Garage" -- a collection of "early" songs recorded in 1995 and '96 -- Ike's voice is competent but charmless. It's when Taylor takes the token lead, with his hint of a rasp and inuitive grasp of how to slide around a melody, that the trio is immediately transformed. Suddenly, they sound ripe for major success.
Consider two such Taylor-led tunes, "Thinking of You" and "MMMBop," which would eventually be produced by the Dust Brothers for Hanson's multiplatinum breakthrough, "Middle of Nowhere." Remarkably, both songs sound almost fully formed, like roughly drawn but precise blueprints for their "Middle of Nowhere" remakes. Sure, the "Nowhere" versions are slicker ("MMMBop" in particular is much improved by a beefier beat and more sophisticated guitar work), but the vocals, arrangements, and personality are already largely in place. If nothing else, these unpolished but promising recordings prove that Hanson is no novelty act born in a major-label conference room.
But while "Garage" makes for fascinating history, as a listening experience it's far less transfixing. Only 3 of these 11 tunes made it onto "Nowhere" and the rest are woefully full of Ike (don't get me wrong: I like Ike, just not as a lead singer). Slight songs -- like "Soldier," a six-minute-plus love story about a toy soldier and a ballerina doll; "River," a vaguely religious, organ-driven trifle; and "Surely as the Sun," a would-be-soulful ballad in the vein of "Nowhere's" far superior "Weird" -- were wisely scrapped.
Why, then, are Hanson and Mercury Records resurrecting them? To make a buck off those 12-year-old completists, of course. For everyone else, "Garage" would have been best left in storage.
C+
Article by
Thomas Carter of World Entertainment:
Hanson - Three Car Garage: The Indie Recordings
"After one year on the international scene, Hanson somehow
has seen fit to look back at its roots. It's an extraordinarily
premature move that smacks of market milking, but then again,
they might be playing the fleeting game of pop smarter than
anyone. It also airs what now could be viewed as pre-fame
ruminitions on Hansonmania in the media, like the chorus of
'Stories' (Stories will be told until we're old / Stories will be
told until the end of time) or a line from "River' (Lately
we've been talking 'bout who we are / Seems we don't know
anymore.)
This collection of songs from the boys' two Tulsa indie records
is interesting if only to get a glimpse of the band from the
perspective of another singer. It's Isaac singing lead on most of
the 11 tracks here -- and doing a surprisingly
formidable job. Hearing his bold vocals on 'Pictures' and the
exquisite ballad 'Surely as the Sun as well as his
green-but-growing guitar work throughout, you can't help but
wonder how the band would have fared had business types not put
the more soulful (and, sure, more fetching) Taylor out front. It
could have been a whollydifferent, grittier guitar band.
But even though the 11-year-old Taylor sounds like a mosquito
here, his immense talent is already evident. He takes the entire
lyric of 'Stories' and makes it come
from him, not through him, adapting every turn of phrase and
every breath to his innate control. His voice may not be deep,
but his soul is an ocean. Two songs from 'Middle of Nowhere'
(Thinking of You, With You in Your Dreams) are here in unpolished
freshness, but a nascent version of the signature 'MMMBop' is a
five-minute drag. Overall, it's a remarkably unaffected batch of
pop songs that brims with a bright-eyed innocence the radio
hasn't seen in two decades.
Play on, boys."
3 Stars
(out of four)
HANSON
Three Car Garage: The Independent Recordings '95-'96
Mercury
Sure, it's a little early for a "Hanson Anthology" trip
through the archives, but this collection from the Tulsa trio's
pre-fame (and largely preteen) home recordings is surprisingly
rewarding. If nothing else, it proves that Isaac, Taylor and
Zachary could really write and play, well before such pros as the
Dust Brothers helped craft the 1997 mega-hit "Middle of
Nowhere" album.
Allowing for the relatively crude garage facilities, this is
pretty solid-sounding. Allowing for their age--they were 14, 12
and 9, respectively, in '95--it's at times astounding. It's no
less accomplished and entertaining in performance and
songwriting--a now-familiar mix of '50s rock and '60s pop
influences--than it is
youthfully exuberant. Their best-known song, "MMMBop,"
one of three that
were redone for "Nowhere," is a little slower and lacks
the Dusts' polish, but is otherwise identical to the smash
version.
And the nine non-"Nowhere" songs--from the hopeful,
upbeat opener "Day Has Come" to the confident prayer
"Surely as the Sun"--are hardly dregs, often carrying a
sophistication well beyond the brothers' years. But even not
allowing for age, this tops the effort of many so-called
adults--though what adult could get away with
"Soldier," the ballad of a lonely toy, without sounding
either twee or cynical?
-STEVE HOCHMAN
Rips and Raves by Devin Rose
Taken from Chicago Tribune
"To hear the tunes that Hanson first pitched to record execs, park yourself in front of your CD player and crank up 3 Car Garage (Mercury). The new CD is a compilation of songs the boys, short on money and studio time, banged out 3 years ago in a Tulsa garage. The cuts are rough and the boys' attempts at harmony don't quite mesh, but the bro's brilliance still shines through in spots. (And it's obvious "MMMBop" was destined to be the band's bighit.) A few notes: It's good Tay became lead singer. (I mean, Yikes Ike!) Also, some of 3 Car's lyrics are way too mature for way-young guys; it just sounds silly when they sing stuff like "If I'm gone when you wake up, please don't cry." (I kept thinking, "If you're there when I wake up, I'm calling the cops.")"
SPIN Online
HANSON - Three Car Garage: The Independent Recordings '95-'96
Mercury
Ever since Goldilocks and his two brothers Hanson emerged from America's heartland and into our hearts, rumors have run rampant: Taylor is a left-handed, dyslexic Swedish-immigrant who dumped a girl named Ashley because she cheated on him. Ike dated LeAnn Rimes and names his guitars after girls he has crushes on. And, Zac, the self-described Gonzo who started to write songs about girls when he was six, is dead.
But the following rumor is the most grizzly of all. It has plagued them ever since their multi-platinum debut, Middle of Nowhere. It has been whispered that the Hanson boys do not write their own songs and they are a studio creation that the Dust Brothers and other super-hip svengalis molded and then unleashed as part of a master plan of world domination. Surprise! It's all completely false. Three Car Garage is devastating for all the curmudgeon Hanson-naysayers out there and an utter vindication for all those sweet teens and happy, irony-free adults who adore them.
On a scale of one to five cases of Dr. Pepper (the band's fave bev), Three Car Garage deserves five cases -- plus a bushel of Jelly Belly Very Cherry jelly beans thrown in for the real fans. Produced by the brothers Hanson themselves in late '95, the CD features demos made in their Tulsa garage in hopes of getting signed. Now we get to hear what fourteen record labels turned down and one very smart guy turned up.
The CD's intro is prophetic enough: an ominous industrial/thriller/nature meditation. Daybreak on the Serengetti. Strings lurking, winding their way into an Emerson Lake and Palmer goth-guitar ripping through the sky and then daybreak. Sunshine. What follows are soulful, up-beat ditties with a stand-out swoony ballad, "River." Watch out for the video (supposedly a Titanic spoof directed by Weird Al who also stars as Jack!). Also included are orginal versions of "MMMBop," "Thinking of You," and "With You in Your Dreams" (all later re-recorded and spruced up for Middle of Nowhere).
The mixes, of course, are not as polished but it's clear that nobody -- not even the Dust Brother -- could have created the Hansons, their music, and their energy their parents, the boys themselves, and their God. Like Taylor says, "It's harder to play music when girls are screaming, but that's just part of life."
Victoria DeSilverio
Wall of Sound-Review
A still-viable debut, followed quickly by a Christmas record, and now an album of rarities and early cuts? It isn't exactly a classic blueprint for success, but it has�until now, anyway�put money in the bank for Oklahoma's favorite teen idols, Hanson. Of course, the question begs asking: Wouldn't it make sense as a career move to keep these early, altogether premature recordings locked in an underwater cave like a photo album of really embarrassing baby pictures? (Which is, as it turns out, what 3 Car Garage ostensibly contains.) And doesn't Middle of Nowhere, Hanson's debut, qualify as "early" material? Why is it that the youngest popular performers�LeAnn Rimes is another artist that comes to mind�insist on showing us their acts before they were actually presentable?
Peter Gabriel waits seven years between albums; these kids don't wait seven months.
The material on 3 Car Garage was recorded by the Tulsa trio two to three years ago and was self-released by the Hanson family for sale at concert events like bake sales, hopscotch competitions, and T-ball games. It cruises through a less-than-adequate and occasionally maddening batch of sugary R&B-pop tunes centered on elemental rhythm guitar tracks and facile lyrics. Songs like the barely passable saga "Soldier" and the reasonably pleasant piano ballad "With You in Your Dreams" hint at better things to come, and the original recording of "MMMBop" does reveal that the Jackson 5-caliber hook was indeed the boys' own creation. But for the most part, the disc is dominated by hookless, one-dimensional, irritatingly sung dreck like "Stories," the not-bad-for-a-grade-schooler "Sometimes," and the downright vapid, synthesized boogie rock of "Day Has Come." Someone's got some explaining to do. �Bob Gulla
Request
3 Car Garage: The Independent Recordings '95-'96 (Mercury)
Conspiracy theorists will assume this compilation from Hanson's first two self-produced, self-distributed albums to be a crass cash-in. But I have it on good authority (the seventh grade girls' basketball squad at Christ the King Grade School in Minneapolis) that the release of 3 Car Garage is the teen equivalent of the Beatles' Anthology. The two reasons are, not necessarily in this order: 1) The girls want to own early songs -- like the bubble-gospel rave "River," which they learned for chorus class off of bootleg tapes -- that until now have been available only to those lucky few who have loved Hanson *forever*, and 2) these recordings capture the Okie hotties before they went through puberty, and the girls just wanna hear the boys "when they sounded like girls." Androgyny envy aside, for the rest of us, the funnest thing to do while listening to these 12 tracks is to pretend you're the fated Mercury A&R oracle, scribbling notes to yourself like, "Drummer sucks. Use click track. Next Jackson Five. Better: Osmonds. I am GOOD."
The big question, of course, which this Garage answers so beautifully, is whether or not that one timeless snootful of sugar was so mind-numbingly delicious when it first found breath. The answer, of course, is MMMyep. ---Jim Walsh