Hanson may well have performed brilliantly Wednesday night at the Webster Theatre in Hartford.

It was tough to know for sure, what with all the screaming from 19-year-old women who made up the majority of the audience.

At least two dozen people camped out overnight to see the trio, which took the stage to a high-pitched keening sound that surely disrupted radio signals for miles around. Likening Hanson to the Beatles is a stretch, yet the crowd's reaction when the lights went down offered a hint of how it must have been when the Fab Four came on at Shea Stadium.

"You guys are absolutely insane," Taylor Hanson told the audience later.

Although it was tough to hear anything, it looked as though the brothers from Tulsa, Okla., performed an acoustic show, with various combinations of guitar, piano and percussion. There were probably sophisticated vocal harmonies on tunes most likely in the classic pop tradition of songwriters such as Carole King.

Many of those songs might have been ballads. One, which could have been "If Only," was drowned out by rapturous applause and more histrionic shrieking. The crowd out-sang the band on "I'll Come To You," and the opening notes of "A Song To Sing" inspired a fresh burst of audience hysteria. During occasional quiet moments, it was apparent that the Hansons are good enough musicians to warrant at least some of their fans' overwhelming dedication - they didn't miss a note of the complex three-part harmonies, the music was understated and tasteful, each comported himself well during a solo spot and they clearly enjoyed themselves on stage. They also performed a soulful, very credible version of Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone)."

Theirs is the Cyndi Lauper dilemma, though. Outside its die-hard fan base, Hanson is still best known for "MMMBop," a No. 1 hit in 1997. The sugary pop song isn't really representative of the band's material - just as "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" isn't representative of Lauper's - yet Hanson faces a perpetual, and not entirely fair, struggle to be taken seriously as anything more than a light-weight teen pop band.

They did, of course, perform "MMMBop" toward the end of the 90-minute set, and it was catchy as ever. The group performed a cheeky cover of Christina Aguilera's song "Dirrty" for an encore.

Promising singer-songwriter Ben Jelen opened the show with a half-hour set of moody piano-based ballads from his forthcoming debut, "Give It All Away."

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