Haven’t heard from Hanson since the days of “MMMBop”? You’ve got some catching up to do. (Start with Snowed In, their excellent Christmas cash-in from 1997, which includes a version of “What Christmas Means to Me” more spirited than Stevie Wonder’s.) Like their successors the Jonas Brothers, the Hanson kids view crafty blue-eyed soul as the route to maturity, and if their records over the past decade or so have occasionally overdosed on an insistent we-play-real-instruments vibe, well, they really can play those real instruments. Earlier this year frontman Taylor Hanson released the super-tuneful debut by his power-pop supergroup Tinted Windows; the brothers’ rep says a new Hanson album is due out next spring. With Huntington Beach’s Hellogoodbye, who have yet to top the electro-emo majesty of their 2006 hit “Here (In Your Arms).”
