November 9, 2001
The Hives : London, Highbury Garage
Rock'n'roll visceral pzazz. The Hives are awesome...
In a gesture soaked in the DNA of fifty years of rock'n'roll iconography, pretty boy Hives singer Howlin Pele flicks his mop top out of his eyes and yelps at the jolly pogo-ers: "WHODYALOVEONMONDAY?ONTUESDAY?ON..."
It's only halfway through the short, vicious, spunk-biz set from Sweden's three chord assault machine but the overpacked crowd already know this is a 24-7 love affair.
Sweden may be over-supplied with stylefreak fan-bands but The Hives are way too good to be a mere tribute phenomena. In their mod white ties and black shirts the quintet of garage band connoisseurs blast through the greasy nihilist spasms of their four year back catalogue with a conviction and intensity which more than does justice to their sources - Stooges, Ramones, Dr Feelgood, Little Richard. In 'Hate To Say I Told You So' and 'Die, All Right' they have Grade A punk anthems strong enough to wrest the genre outta the grip of mohawk saddoes. In terms of tunes, perfectly honed-noise and electric charisma they're probably a far more gripping live creature than The Strokes - the only problems being a) they don't have the male model gang look and b) the delight taken by Howlin in hamming Jagger gestures and sending up his tight trousered holy roller star persona lends them a not 'serious' kink.
It's more of a tailored Ramones/Cramps twisted teen thing than your existential art hero combo, so don't look this way for messiahs of angst, but in terms of pure(ist) rock'n'roll visceral pzazz, great gosh a'mighty The Hives are awesome.
Roger Morton
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