Album Reviews |

The Hives


Your New Favourite Band 8 ( 2001 )
Hate To Say I told You So / Main Offender / Supply And Demand / Die, All Right / Untutored Youth / Outsmarted / Mad Man / Here We Go Again / A.K.A. i-d-i-o-t / Automatic Schmuck / Hail Hail Spit n' Drool / The Hives Are Law, You Are Crime

The Poptones label collects together the highlights of The Hives short career to date and manages to concisely present The Hives to a wider audience than previously. And, how! They've been in the top twenty of the UK album charts for about four months now! Cool! And! 'Hate To Say I Told You So' blasts from the speakers with angular guitar lines mixed in with pounding frantic drums and a singer that bears a passing resemblance to a punk rock Mick Jagger. Fantastic. 'Main Offender' is dirty, all over the place but amazingly exciting with it. Makes you want to jump and down for no good reason at all. Great to shout along to. We have 'Supply And Demand' and 'Die, All Right' where The Hives debt to Punk of a Ramones nature becomes clear. These are all short songs, all fast angry songs. The final track is a quiet weird instrumental and serves no purpose at all but all of the other songs if taken individually raise a smile and arms waved stupidly in the air. And hair, swung stupidly around your face and a sense of giddy excitement that everything will turn out ok. A beaming smile. OUT-SMARTED! But, a funny thing occurs across the latter part of this sub thirty minute compilation. You get weary. The dancing and hair and arm waving stop. You sit down and think, well, that was fun, but what now? Do The Hives have substance? They display a complete lack of varying moods and tempos. Everything flows together and you find yourself actually only remembering about three of these songs, even after repeated listening. Still, they are a breath of simple fresh air, if nothing else. And, I can think of far worse ways to spend a half hour.

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Readers Comments Micheal E Rodriguez leahcim666@juno.com Oh what a blast of filthy fresh air the first time I heard "Die all Right". These guys are not looking to club you over the head with social messages, They want to Fuck, Get Drunk and spread the Disease. Did you not hear the song? Nonstop blitzkrieg assault of snarling guitars and smartass attitude with great keith moon like drumming and These guys better not soften up with success . Yo !!! THESE BOYS ARE A HOOT !!!! bass player edd eddie123zeppelin@hotmail.com I'm only young but find modern music very dull so i have turned to the 60's and 70's. But as far as modern music goes this is quite good.

Nobody ever expected The Hives to have succeeded in the first place. They were almost Sweden's least likely to, when they first started touring and recording. Yet, The Hives are clever fellows at times. They realise a band needs mythology. The Hives provide that with a ( possibly ) imaginary mentor/manager who supposedly also writes all of the groups material. The Hives sense of image, their smart matching suits. They look a little ridiculous and a little silly. Let's face it, they look so very rock 'n' roll! I wasn't actually expecting a lot of this new album, neccessarily. I was expecting The Hives to falter, as others have. In fact, they've done quite the opposite, they've continued their rise. 'Your Favourite New Band' compiled the best bits to-date. 'Tyrannosaurus Hives' is good enough to be better than even that. To be fair, it needed to be better in order to maintain the groups forward progress. Yet, in doing so, The Hives have managed something others have failed to do. So, once again The Hives confound their doubters? Well, oh yes indeed, they have! Happily, they still sound completely insane. Yet, there is a new found electronic influence in places within the grooves of 'Tyrannosaurus Hives'. They haven't exactly turned into Kraftwerk and they haven't enlisted Brian Eno as producer. Rather, there is now a level of new found precision to their playing. A song such as 'Diabolic Scheme' has a string section, stabbing clean guitar lines and other more squiggly sections of guitar. A demented vocal/lyric! It's basically the simple thrash of early Hives taken to an entirely new, more sophisticated level.

We also have variety here. Indeed, 'Tyrannosaurus Hives' is definitely The Hives most varied work, yet also seems to be their most cohesive at the same time. They mix straightforward garage punk, with new-wave style alternative pop, with some other throbbingly precise moments of rock glory along the way. The time they've spent working on this album shows, this is easily their best set of songs to-date. Twelve songs, thirty minutes, perfect. Highlights along the way include first single 'Walk Idiot Walk', which at a massive three minutes thirty one seconds, is also the longest song present. From that, we switch straight into the gloriously simple groove of 'No Pun Intended' and later pass through the likes of 'A Little More For Little You', songs that show The Hives have really honed their skill at writing addictive melodies. They retain their sense of humour with the very silly 'Dead Quote Olympics', a song that sounds like The Ramones crossed with 'Black Sea' era XTC. The hugely enjoyable closing song 'Antidote' contains what almost seem like required 'woo-ooh-hoo' backing vocals. For possibly the first time on a Hives album, and i'm including 'Barely Legal' and 'Vendi Vidi Vicious', The Hives don't taper off with 'Tyrannosaurus Hives'. What a perfect album title, by the way. Think about it.... they've managed to improve enough and vary themselves enough to remain fresh sounding. Other bands of their ilk are starting to fall by the wayside, that's if they haven't already. It's almost a brave album title, inviting critiscm should it fall their way. On the basis of 'Tyrannosaurus Hives' however, there are very few people around that should have anything at all to complain about.

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Readers Comments Ben Western benwestern66@hotmail.com I think your words speak true, and after being hooked on the smashing vibe of Your New Favourite Band, I wasn't convinced that this was a band who could follow up something so great....well seeing that they were Swedish and that this was a compilation! But this is a great album, full of power and aggression, yet with they're own very unique touch of stupidity. I wouldn't say I prefer it to the previous album, but it didn't disappoint.

Tick, Tick..... BOOM go The Hives. They return sounding exactly the same as we always remember. I mean, Sweden is teaming with garage rock bands and they probably sound all like The Hives or at least, vaguely similar, yet The Hives cartoonish nature ensures they remain in the public eye. The Hives always remain the same, indeed, the first two songs on the LP sound like 'Hate To Say I Told You So' parts twelve and fifteen, respectively. Is that boring? Well, no. Just don't take The Hives seriously, ever, and we should all be ok. 'You Got It All.... Wrong' is The Hives do The Ramones, for example. Nothing wrong with this, especially the crunchy bits. 'Well All Right!' is a Hives song title, right down to the exclamation mark. The backing vocals are the exclamation mark. This is quite an ambitious arrangement, admitedly though, only by Hives standards. A truly demented vocal, those 'whoo hoo!' backing vocals, plenty of 'ah yeah' bits. Like a cross between, well, The Hives and John Spencer Blues Explosion. Also, this being The Hives, there's a couple of kooky things here. One is a rather dull instrumental, better is 'Puppet On A String' which sounds like 'Get Behind Me Satan' by The White Stripes gone badly awry. It's somehow both scary and funny at the same time. Yes, kids, The Hives are here to scare you away!

You want some funk though don't you? Some pure black soul? Well, not quite, but 'T.H.E.H.I.V.E.S' as it's spelt in my Winamp player should suit you, complete with silly Scissor Sister styled disco backing vocals. Other decent songs? 'Won't Be Long' continues with this vaguely electronic theme begun ( and now ended ) by 'T.H.E.H.I.V.E.S'. Good stuff, strong stomping, shouted chorus. I like The Hives. Always pleasurable, I find. Never mind-blowing, but their persistance, if anything, needs to be praised.

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