The Hives

Fri 3rd Jun, 2011 in Features

Ahhhh Scandinavia. The smell of the spruce trees. The long, dark winter nights. The isolation. The Puffins. The plumes of vapour as each breath hits the air. The cold Arctic winds blowing in from the North. There must be something in that air up there.

Whatever it is, Scandinavia seems to be an extremely fertile ground for incredible music, even if the rest of the world mostly doesn’t notice. Mainstream pop – Abba, A-ha, Aqua, Roxette, Ace of Base – would be most people’s idea of the music from this chilly area ,but there is a good argument to be made that rock (Hellacopters, Turbonegro),indie-pop (Sugarcubes, Cardigans, Peter Bjorn & John ), death metal (Entombed, Bathory, Satyricon) and punk (Millencolin, Refused ) that comes from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden is amongst the best in the world. And towering above them all like a ten-legged, well-dressed colossus are the mighty Swedish rock gods The Hives.

Originally formed in 1989 with a different name and style, by 1995 they had embraced the kind of explosive garage rock that has become their trademark. Signed to Sweden’s premier skate/punk label Burning Heart; it was as a live act that they instantly set themselves apart and won a huge and loyal following. Always immaculately turned out in matching outfits, they were a blur of kinetic energy. They carried themselves with a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

“In forty minutes we will be your new favourite band” front man Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist famously announced on stage at the Livid Festival in 2001. Twenty minutes later he corrected himself “Okay I was wrong, we are already your new favourite band!”.

It was the quote that inspired a ‘best of’ CD featuring tracks from the first two albums called Your New Favourite Band. With each new album there has been another barrage of fantastic hi-octane rock songs Hate To Say I Told You So, Main Offender, Tick Tick Boom, but each release seems to take ages, three of four years. FasterLouder asked drummer Chris Dangerous for the answers.

Why do Hives album’s take so long?
The reason is we can’t really focus on two such big things at the same time. When we are on tour, every night we try to beat the night before in terms of performance and everything. So we spend a lot of time figuring out ways to get better on every night of every tour. So we can’t be focusing on being creative and writing new songs and stuff like that. And we tour a lot. When we release a record we tour anywhere from eighteen months to two and a half years to go round the globe and get to all the places that want to see us. When we get home we start working on a new record straight away. If we want to release records faster we have to tour less. Until we can clone ourselves or get a matter transporter…

So going by previous release gaps we must be just about due for a new Hives album soon?
Absolutely! We’ve been working in the studio every day for three or four months now, so we are getting closer and closer. We are sitting back and listening to what we have done so far and it really gets us excited. I haven’t got a release date for it yet, but we are really happy with it and it will be pretty soon.

There was an E.P. of covers last year ( Tarred & Feathered ), which included a version of a Flash and the Pan song. (Flash & The Pan was a studio project by Harry Vanda and George Young, both ex-Easybeats and Young has a brother called Angus you might have heard of). I had no idea they were known outside of Australia, where they popular in Sweden?
Not really [laughter]. I wouldn’t say big. We always try to find music that we really like and that song, Early Morning Wake Up Call is a fantastic song. We always listened to it for a long time and always loved it. We when we decided to do a covers E.P. that was definitely a song we wanted to attempt. I think it turned out really good.

The Easybeats combined tough sounds and pop harmonies and it seems that a lot of Scandinavian bands have a very strong sense of melody even the punk and metal bands, where do you think that comes from?
It probably comes from a tradition of folk music. The type of songs that every kid grows up with and learns to sing in school. It is a very set style that you learn while you are growing up. On Midsummer’s Eve there is always a bunch of folk music being played. It must be those roots that come naturally to Scandinavian people. I don’t know what else it could be.