Don’t Be An Idiot, See The Hives

Oh, what a year 2002 was for music: The return of rock, as so many music critics called it. Not unlike grunge, ten years before it, the return of rock, the garage rock revival, or whatever you call it, really wasn’t that surprising in retrospect. Music is very cyclical and every five or ten years or so, there’s a rock revival of some sort.

In 1991, four Seattle-area bands kicked the lipstick and leather rockers to the curb and ushered in the angst years. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains didn’t just record a bunch of great records, they recorded a bunch of records that have aged very well and changed the landscape like no other artists since the ‘70’s. Of course, just like anything great, the market became oversaturated by crappy bands like Bush and Candlebox and it all came crashing down.

But back to 2002, the garage rock revival and the “The” bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Vines, and The Hives: as much as everyone wanted to lump these four bands together, none of them really sounded anything like the others.

The Strokes were very New York, with jean jackets, disshelved hair and a sound similar to Television with hooks; The White Stripes rocked out the Delta-blues via Detroit; and The Vines sounded like Nirvana. That group of turds even somehow managed to land on the cover of Rolling Stone. And, of course, there were The Hives, Sweden’s answer to the Stooges.

Formed by singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and brother Nicholaus Arson, on guitar, The Hives were initially the least talked about, but they proved to be the best singles band out of that whole scene. Their second disc, Veni Vidi Vicious, generated the still-great single, “Hate to Say I Told You So,” as well as “Main Offender,” which they performed at the 2002 VMA’s, trouncing The Vines in a battle of the bands. They followed VVV up with “Tyrannosaurus Hives” which produced another great single, “Walk Idiot Walk.”

Their most recent disc, 2007’s “The Black and White Album,” continues that tradition of high-octane, hooky, bombastic songs and was one of the better releases last year. The first single, “Tick Tick Boom,” has been blowing up (no pun intended) all year in various commercials and movie trailers and there’s a bunch more tracks just as good that should keep them rolling through the rest of the year.

I had a chance to catch up with the Howlin’ one on a tour stop in Europe, and while he wasn’t howlin’ or anything close to it, he is one funny dude. I wonder if it’s a Swedish thing. Makes you wonder about the hijinx that went on during those old ABBA tours.

HPR: When you started, you said you planned on making three records and then quitting. Why did you decide to make “The Black and White Album”?

PA: We decided we kind of weren’t done yet. It’s very addictive being in a good band and we felt we still had some work to do and knew a way to do it, so we decided to work with other people and do it in a different way so it would feel a bit more fresh to us. “Tyrannosaurus Hives” kind of represented us kind of boiling ourselves down to the smallest common denominator and making it as Hives as we could, so this time we decided to make something that was less Hives, if that makes sense.

HPR: Was that the reason for working with Pharrel and Dennis Herring?

PA: We decided on Dennis Herring early on but he was recording a Modest Mouse album and doing a bunch of things that just seemed to take forever, so we decided we were record some other stuff while waiting for him. So we recorded with Pharrel, which we had decided a long time ago--he’d wanted to work with us for a long time and that was the time to do it. Then we recorded a song with a friend of ours and that was so much fun that we decided we were just going to do it with a bunch of people and then at the end of it, when we actually worked with Dennis Herring.

HPR: Tick Tick Boom is impossible to escape right now in commercials.

PA: I don’t know if it works as well, but I know what it is and no record company is going to spend a lot of money because they don’t have any money, they’re just firing people all the time. I’m not sure I like the development, but it is what it is and I think it’s going to keep going that way where bands are more associated with products and I’m not too crazy about it. But as long as people don’t pay for records then bands are going to have to get paid in some sort of way.

HPR: It seems everyone is going digital.

PA: Yeah, it’s fine apart from the fact it sounds like shit to me. What I do, basically, is I listen to vinyl at home, but when I’m traveling I only listen to MP3’s because it’s so much more convenient, but it still sounds pretty awful to me. I mean, if I buy a record and it sounds like that, then you might as well record it in your basement.

HPR: You’ve had the same lineup for over ten years, how do you keep from killing each other?

PA: There’s something about this band and how the members work together, there’s no other way it could be. If somebody were to quit, I don’t know what would happen because it’s been the five of us for like 15 years. In the beginning, we kind of had to survive all the times of hating each other and beating each other up because there was no one else to play with in our shitty hometown so we had to put up with each other. And it’s the kind of band where it’s so much about the way it sounds when we play, too. It’s not a guy with an acoustic guitar and then you add a band and you can change every member and it would still sound the same.

HPR: Being one of the best live bands, who would you pay money to see?

PA: I’d pay money to see Kraftwerk, AC/DC, and a lot of current bands, too: The White Stripes and Queens of the Stone Age, although I must say none of them are really as good as us.

If You Go

What: The Hives
Where: The Venue at The Hub
When: Mon., May 19, 8 p.m.
How Much: $20,
Who: All ages
Info: (701) 232-6767