A JOG THROUGH THE WALK

As I listened to The Walk for the first time, I found myself doing something that I've never done before with a new Hanson record. In the first opening bars of each song, I braced myself and said fast, fervent prayers that I would hear Taylor's voice — or as a bland second choice, Ike's — instead of Zac's.

The day has been approaching for many a year when the Hanson boys would finally and fully separate themselves from each other as songwriters, despite their unnerving unity, their Lennon/McCartney-esque insistence on shared credit. That's not surprising. It is an inevitable consequence of growing up, of sharing a bedroom with someone other than your brother. What is surprising, though, is the precision by which this split happened, the distinctiveness of Isaac, Taylor, and Zac's songwriting paths, and how resolutely and quickly the cream rose to the top.

I appreciate that Zac Hanson has more songwriting time on his hands than his baby-swaddling, newlywed big brothers, but that shouldn't extrapolate to more album time. I, for one, was happy with Zac's neat, limited little bachelor pad at Track 8. Now that he's married, he's spread out. And frankly, he's sort of taking over the place in a bad way. He's leaving his dirty shoes on the table. He's eating all the food. On the Japanese release of The Walk, Zac sings lead on six of the album's incredibly overblown 16 tracks. With his thin-ish voice (imagine Taylor's with all the dimension and urgency stripped away) and rambling melodies (check out some of the jarring shifts in "Go"), Zac's contributions to The Walk feel more like concessions to a little brother than meticulously chosen gems.

To be fair, Zac faces a quandary here: His older brother is Taylor Hanson. Without Taylor's voice, his weird/charming lyrics, his unflappable sense of melody just a track away, Zac might very well seem like an accomplished songwriter and singer in his own right. But on the album, as in life, Taylor has an unnerving way of sucking all the light into his galaxy, of making all the other stars look a little labored in their orbit.

Zac's songs don't suck. There's a scrap of something interesting about "Running Man," of Hanson's am-radio tendencies buffed and polished until they're almost a parody of themselves. Unfortunately, though, Hanson doesn't have enough self-awareness to self-parody. They just called it "the party track." For what kind of party? The rest of Zac's songs don't fare much better. "Fire on the Mountain", and tragically, the album's title track, have a facelessness that would have sent Jeff Fenster, justifiably, into fits.

In spite of all that, The Walk manages to come out all right, thanks to Taylor and his formidable senses of melody and drama, even if both seem a little unfocused at times. Listening to his songs, it's hard not to wonder if he didn't go to Africa alone, or if he was just the only one who absorbed its lazy heat and relentless rhythm. It's clear, though, that it made an impression on him. There are bits of African children talking and playing, the sounds of thunderstorms rumbling across the plains, and of course, the choir. You hear them in the songs themselves, and in an intriguing scrap of a rehearsal that Taylor is clearly leading. They give The Walk a wonderful whiff of playfulness and a continuity that it sorely needs across its sprawling 16 tracks — a distance that feels as vast as the African bush itself at times. There is something of Africa, too, in the guts of Taylor's songs, in the crashing minor chords in "Blue Sky."

It is when Hanson is being Hanson, though, that The Walk starts to actually get somewhere. The easygoing "Been There Before," and the strutting "Something Going 'Round" are the album's strongest tracks, mostly because they keep it simple, and because Taylor lets his thunderstorm of a voice rumble and flash at will. He even attempts to enunciate once in a while.

It's true that there is nothing here as incandescent as "Crazy/Beautiful" or as exciting as "Get Up and Go," but in considering The Walk against Hanson's earlier albums, the ones that the fans love so faithfully, it's hard not to be a little impressed. I wonder if youthful adoration has skewed our adult opinions of Hanson a bit. Is This Time Around the masterpiece that we were all so sure it was? Or were we all just a little hopped up on silky blond hair and too many concerts and the tantalizing lure of being culturally relevant? This is an album, remember, that contained such musical drivel as "Wish That I Was There," "Can't Stop," "Love Song," and "Sure About It." Almost everything on The Walk is at least more interesting and mature — if not better crafted — than those songs. It may not be their great masterpiece — Underneath, with its blissful second half, comes closer in that regard — but it is miles stronger and more articulate than anything Hanson was doing at the height of their fame. For that, it has been worth hanging on. Even with Zac standing on your fingers.

03.03.07