I honestly thought about doing this entire review en Francais for a few minutes and then changed my mind, figuring that obscurity didn't lend itself well to the average Hanson review. I speak French, very badly in fact, and for some strange reason, I thought the opportunity to use it would present itself in Montreal. It actually didn't, but no matter.

I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting from the Montreal show. To tell the truth, I think I had lowered my expectations considerably, given that the show was general admission. Those sorts of situations, for someone in the audience, generally up the odds for things like bodily injury and exhaustion and chaos. Everyone squishes to the front. People get crushed. Security gets intensely aggravated. The band spends half of their set telling everyone to move back. After seeing the Moffatts and the Barenaked Ladies and some other random, considerably less important bands in a general admission situation, I was genuinely afraid of what we'd be facing in Montreal. After all, Hanson has, without much argument, a zealous, weird, frantic, possessive fan base that loves to scream, squish and scramble in the name of Hanson worship. But all of that aside, we were going to see Hanson, and because we're card carrying members of the very fan base I just mentioned, we figured that no matter the levels of audience insanity, the show would be worth it. Because it always is.

Then there's the matter of Montreal itself, which may very well be the most interesting, well-dressed, colorful city we happened to float through for this tour. Highlights, beyond the wide and varied selection of sex shops and strip clubs (Super Sexe, Sexotheque, Le Rendezvous du Sexe, one of which offered a "danse contacte legal."), and the fact that we stayed at the same hotel as M2M, included the rather amazing selection of upper-tier clothing stores, a legal drinking age of 18 and lovely, exceedingly well groomed French-speaking boys of every variety. (Not that we took any sort of significant advantage of the drinking age laws, unless you consider a single pina colada at a restaurant after a Hanson concert to be vagrant, irresponsible activity.) And of course, there's Celine Dion's restaurant.

At times, it seemed like a completely incongruent experience, traveling here to see three, milk-fed, Christian, sweet-faced American boys with lilts of the Midwest in their voices, to a place so weirdly, disjointedly European in its feel. Strange to think of it, the fact that we were at a show with fans who, conceivably, might not speak tremendous amounts of English.

It was raining, which complicated everything. It wasn't even real umbrella rain to speak of, more that frigid, annoying spit that doesn't quite fall, but just mysteriously collects on your hair and the shoulders of your jacket when suddenly you look up and realize that you're drenched. Girls who had been standing outside since six o'clock in the morning were soggy and exhausted by the time we arrived just a few hours before the show. We couldn't figure out where to pick up our tickets. It was cold. I was frustrated.

I'm not sure how or why, but things seemed to fall into place after that. We found out information about our tickets. We joined the line that was stretching well around the block from Metropolis. We huddled under our two rather feeble umbrellas. (There were five of us.) And without much fuss beyond that, we were inside the venue.

There was something exciting about it, this tiny, black hole of a theater, not so different from the dingy clubs in Boston where bands with less than explosive chart positions make their livings every night of the week. They sold alcohol. There was a coat check, for goodness sakes. If those aren't the indelible signs that a band has moved well into the realm of Real Rock Band, I'm not sure what is. It conjured memories of those awful, teasing rumors of a Hanson club tour that circulated a while back, and may have provided the best chance to see what it actually would have been like. Laid back. Intimate. No pretentious polish. No sets. A stage. A band. Music.

I don't know that we made a conscious decision not to squish. Or maybe we did, given our experiences with general admission shows and the pros and cons of being squished (Barenaked Ladies) and not (the Moffatts). But after seeing the girls, in typical form, run for the stage and wedge themselves so tightly against the barriers that breathing looked like a complicated exercise, we knew that we were too old, too cranky, too fragile and too protective of our personal space to embroil ourselves in that in any way. So we used the Moffatts-at-Karma tactic that had so well preserved our sanity a year earlier. We let everyone squish up front while we took the unoccupied space at the back. There were no extraneous body parts poking into our sides, no waving arms blocking our view of the stage, no screams in our ears. We had room to move, to dance, to jump around, without the bothersome restriction of a seat poking into the backs of our legs and cranky security making sure we were all nicely in our allotted slots. General admission was starting to look better and better by the second.

Of course, all of this was aided by the fact that the crowd, despite their excitement outside the venue, was entirely different from any we'd encountered on the tour thus far. First, there weren't nearly as many people as we'd figured upon. The show never sold out. At one point, it looked as though there were no more than 800 or 900 people in the entire house, balconies included. It was almost surreal, as though Hanson had finally found the "intimacy" they so wanted on this tour. And beyond that, the crowd was incredibly polite, listening more than screaming, applauding more than stomping. It was a nice change. If there's one single fact about Montreal that stands out in my mind, it's that I unquestionably heard the entire show, and after the deafening screams at Boston, it was a welcome change. The entire feeling at Montreal was relaxed, and even the band seemed to get into it. Taylor would peek out at the crowd every few songs and ask, "You guys are having fun, right?" Of course, that laid back atmosphere undoubtedly had much to do with the lack of any I Have Better Seats than You rivalry floating in the air. It was a low-stakes show.

The single most distinctive thing when they took the stage was the apparent coordination of Taylor's and Isaac's shirts. Purposeful or not, it seemed to be Jewel Toned Shirts night, with Taylor in a red (Because red, to quote a wise man, makes everything beautiful.) and Isaac in a rather nice, shimmery purple. Different enough to not look like a uniform. Similar enough to create some nice, visual onstage harmony. (As if there wasn’t enough of that floating around to begin with.)

This show marked the onstage debut (for us anyway) of the new, plugged-in version of Sure About It, which rocked rather nicely and gently, and in a more interesting way than the acoustic version. Although given the audience noise level at the other shows we saw, it's not entirely clear what the acoustic version of the song sounded like. But we like the new version very much. Plus, Zac seems to have so much more fun banging vociferously than he does with a single maraca. And if there's one thing that can be said about the general quality of a Hanson show, it's this: If Zac's not into it and having fun, the show won't be as be good. Makes sense? We think so.

Other musical highlights included a positively wrenching version of Save Me. To watch Taylor's knees twist under his keyboard from the sheer passion of it all was almost as fascinating and all-powerful as the ache of his voice. A lot of critics (including this one) have called the lyrics cliché, but they're not, at second (third, fourth, fifth) glance. The idea of complete and total supplication of the self is a freaky enough concept for out times without it coming out of the mouth of an angelically beautiful teenage boy. The message gains even more potency when that angelically beautiful teenage boy is standing in front of you, the audience member, when technically, you're the one who's supposed to be doing the supplicating. Save Me, played live, is a pretty surreal, wonderful experience.

The Montreal show, because of the suspicious lack of noise coming from the audience, provided a great opportunity to pay close attention to the songs that usually just float by in a haze: If Only, Mmmbop, Minute Without You, Song to Sing. The latter was note perfect, probably the best we've seen thus far on this tour, even if they did ax the glassy surface verse. Of course, anything loses its poignancy and its specialness if it's paraded out of the closet one too many times, so we forgive them.

Mmmbop is a different song entirely from any previous version, up to and including the Live From Albertane incarnation where Taylor swung between bongos and keys for the duration of the song, inspiring speculation over when, exactly, he'd move too quickly and whack his pretty face on a microphone or two. Now, thankfully, he's settled on bongos, and we like it lots. It gives back some of the quirky punch that the song lost at Albertane. All of this brings up the notion of band protocol, and the Golden Question: To play the hits or not to play the hits? Hanson seems to be, wisely, banking on the former option. It works for the critics who don't know any other song. It works in terms of nostalgia. It works in the sense that it's a concrete thing to point to and say, "Look how much we've changed." Mmmbop is good. May it reign supreme in the Billboard chart of our collective heart forever.

The highlight of If Only, embarrassingly enough, had nothing to do with what was happening onstage. Thanks to our placement at the back of the house, we were right in front of the sound booth, which is where Walker Hanson decided to stand for most of the show. Given that most of the crowd was so busy pushing and crunching up front, no one really noticed that he was there. (Of course, the audience was appropriately engaged with his sons at the time while we were busy watching him.) Beyond the generally fascinating fact that he just looks so darn much like them, and his overall attractiveness, we stole a glance or two over our shoulders throughout the show. Having Walker Hanson behind you is good because you get to see him grin from ear to ear as he watches his sons onstage. You get to see him jump up and down right along with the crowd (and Taylor) during If Only. The bad thing about having Walker Hanson directly behind you? Isaac Hanson goes to pull that marvelous, silky purple shirt off his shoulders, and every fiber of your young, lusty, female being wants to shout "TAKE IT OFF!!" and you absolutely can't do it, because the boy's daddy is standing right there and he would think that you were raised in a barn if you did. Furthermore, he probably wouldn't allow you to marry any of his sons, and that, after all, is the final goal, and we wouldn't want to compromise that in any way.

Over all, Montreal was a fascinating experience. There were more men in the audience than I've ever seen at any Hanson show, and not just of the tag-along-boyfriend variety either. One gentleman down in front of us danced more than we did. And we danced lots. And lots. That's another thing about general admission shows. If you find a good spot to stand, you can raise quite a personal ruckus by way of physical thrashing and whatnot. It's fun, if you can let any I Will Not be A Spastic Teenie pretensions fall by the wayside for an evening.

Merci beaucoup, Montreal. Catch you next time around.