The Hives - 100 Club, London - 24/7/07
5/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
Dear readers, I find myself in something of a quandary. Last Tuesday night, while not as particularly drunk as the following would make me seem, I was ankle deep in sweat, covered in a film of Swedish spit and declaring, arms raised in the air, that I would only listen to The Hives for the rest of my life, followed by a burst of "I believe!", with those surrounding me clasping me by the arm and saying, "us too!".
This was the scene at the recent intimate show put on by the Hives to promote their new album that looms unwearyingly in the minds of five men who have put black and white suits firmly on the map, and over their career reinvented garage rock from the outside in.
Set-lists to the show were irrelevant. Firstly because the bands vigorous front man Howlin' Pelle Almqvist pays little attention to them, and secondly because each and every song was equally as overriding and imposing as the last. They don't do slow bits moving into fast bits, guitar solos, concept pieces or stadium anthems, instead they pick up their guitars and thrash them to the melodies of forgotten 60s pop songs while wailing out the most ridiculous, yet brilliant, salvo of surreal vocals and hardcore music exposure. They play faster and harder than any other band of their kind, seemingly not stopping to breathe, only to exchange oddball and comically self-glorifying banter with the audience, closer to their roaring heroes than many have been before. This was the smallest setting I'd ever seen the band play and I was worried that the correct atmosphere wouldn't happen, but within seconds the arrangement of black-dressed aficionados dove to life, slapping hi-5s to the band and swathing around in what had to be the smallest mosh pit ever witnessed in London, though among the most unruly. There being no barrier, or cage as they often feel, in front of the crowd, there of course was little or no security to stop us from reaching out at random intervals to rub the head of Almqvist or his (rumoured) genetically engineered guitar-wielding sidekick and brother, Nicholaus Arson, or occasionally plunging onto the stage to only leap back out on the wave of another face-crunching riff or chord rampage.
At times you can't tell where the myth of The Hives ends and the real band begins. Does their songwriter Fitzsimmons exist? Did God himself send the band down to Earth to show us how to rock, and also how to roll? Was Dr. Matt Destruction a high school teacher who went insane, picked up a guitar and fused with it to form one man-shaped stringed instrument? Such questions weren't answered. If anything more arose.
Distracted as we were by the close proximity that Almqvist kept to our heads, joining in our small but endlessly amusing conversations, head-butting us no less than three times, we almost failed to notice the new material. It all sounded proverbial, not really standing out amid the older stuff like "Two Timing Touch..." and "Main Offender", but with so much devotion to the back catalogue, to be able hold the recent work with even nearly the same regard and forceful physical appreciation is nothing short of astonishing. That you can hear a Hives track and instantly be enthralled by it is the reason they exist. OK, so they have an element of novelty about them, and a certain not-so-serious take on their own words and music, but what's exceptional about them is that they have this unique performance and song orchestration style that's so far away from uniformity that their music is openly distinctive and interesting, meaning that once the catchy honeymoon phase is over, you've still got these absurdly relevant rock songs that increase in incentive as they age. You couldn't have planned for a band like this, nor predicted them. They exist only out of necessity for rule breaking, and as though to say you don't have to be a lanky, floppy haired, skinny-jean wearing twenty-something to play rock and roll... The Hives are proof that it doesn't matter how you look, how you play, how you fit into the 'scene' that accounts for your popularity, rather what you do and how you do it. Not that looking amazing while you do it will do you any particular harm.
On paper they don't work, but live on stage they can pull anything off. The audience are enraptured, pledging aforementioned everlasting allegiance to the band, agreeing only to listen to their music for the rest of our lives. So important is the band to their followers that in the heat of the moment several of us truly held the belief that such a thing was possible and kept the undertaking, certainly until a few days later in my own case at which point I welcomed anything with a relaxed sentiment. People will still say they're a novelty band and many will struggle to give their long players the attention they deserve, but that adds only more magic to the consortium of marvels that draw you into their world of Swedish garage punk, knowing that their fan-base will always be limited, but so incredibly, mercilessly devoted. Anybody unsure as to what purpose The Hives serve need look no further than the galloping horde of enthusiasts that came racing out of the 100 Club this week to see their importance, panting and raving about how numb their legs were, dripping with one third their own sweat, one third other peoples and one third Pelle's spit. Our clothes were drenched, our jeans were ripped, our arms and legs battered and bruised. We had the bitter taste of bodily fluids in our mouths, the dancefloor still splintered into our feet as we stank to high heaven, but our ears were anaesthetized from the sound of rock 'n' roll and at such a moment you can only thank your mum and dad for having you so the instant could exist.
I want to only listen to The Hives for the rest of my life, I'd be happy to, yet I feel bad for contracting so as I know it's an impossible task. Here, we're music fans first, and critics second, but in a pathetic attempt to tick the second box ... erm... they didn't play 'A.k.a. I.D.I.O.T'. That's about it. That was about the only disappointment in a show that held me with such consideration that for one annalistic moment I regarded them as the most important band in my life. I know they're not the best band, but who cares about the intricate critiquing of music when it makes you feel so good. Surely that's the point?
Artists in this article: The Hives
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