Love Machine

In 1997, Hanson released the album ‘Middle Of Nowhere’ and took #1 on the UK charts. Fourteen years later, Isaac, Taylor and Zac took to the stage at King’s College London on Sunday night to play the entire record from start to finish to an audience who were word perfect to just about every track.

The 5of5 tour is a fan experience for the most dedicated. On five consecutive nights, Hanson will play each of their five studio albums from 1997’s ‘Middle Of Nowhere’ through to ‘Shout It Out’ released this week in the UK.

Of course there were no surprises in the setlist, because, well if you know the album, you’ll know how it plays through. Kicking off with track 1, ‘Thinking Of You’ (at an octave lower than the original recordings) and then straight into ‘MMM Bop’, the boys stayed pretty true to the existing arrangements, though the live atmosphere made everything a good deal more bombastic. And there’s really no way to describe the feeling of being fully immersed in a song like ‘MMM Bop’ other than it was quite close to pure euphoria.

There was a moody little dip for ‘Weird’ an angst-fest for misfits long before Gaga was being ‘Born This Way’ but the tempo lifted for personal favourite ‘Speechless’ - grungey, funky, disc-scratching pop goodness. ‘Where’s The Love’ was another crowd pleaser, with every single person singing the chorus back at a clearly exuberant Hanson.

Other highlights include Zac enthusiastically recreating his barking spaz-out in the final minute of ‘Look At You’, everyone joining in on the “whoa-oh” moments in ‘With You In Your Dreams’ and the brilliant ‘Man From Milwaukee’ (the “hidden” track) not being omitted from the setlist.

Miraculously, the momentum didn’t drop once - unlike most live shows where the ballads are all lumped together so that everyone can go to the toilet/the bar/home, following the tracklisting meant the slower moments were spread out at intervals and always sandwiched between something more upbeat.

Even more miraculously, there was no real indication that these adult men were singing songs they wrote as very young lads - indeed, half of the ‘Middle Of Nowhere’ record was written when the brothers were 14, 12 and 9-years-old. None of the tracks had dated, and it is a credit to their songwriting abilities that for a group widely perceived as a “boyband”, there was more than just a handful of guys with their girlfriends who far from being there under duress, were singing along word perfect.

With an encore of ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ - the opening song from their Albertane Tour, which took in Wembley Arena back in 1998, Hanson ended the gig with a fun nod to their past and an unwitting warning that Bieber, the brothers Jonas and even Willow Smith will never be able to play through their first albums in fourteen years and have every song still feel pretty classic.

We interviewed Hanson last Friday, so look out for it later this week, as soon as we’ve got over our tinnitus and transcribed it!