The Hives’ lead singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist brought his Scandanavian garage band to Denver for a sweaty good time. Photos by
are undoubtedly one of those bands that thrive on proximity.
You’re up close in the wet-n-pushy pit, dancing in the long shadow of spastic frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, and you feed off his life force like a psychic vampire. (Seriously, look at .) Almqvist, as everybody knows, is the new Mick Jagger. (Now that Mick Jagger is barely Mick Jagger.) And his enthusiasm for the music — his “life force” — is mostly unmatched.
But the further you get away from Almqvist and his tractor-beam of a personality, the easier it is to be less smitten with the Hives. They’re keeping the garage rock torch aflame on a surprisingly mainstream level, sure, but the music is nothing more than fun-n-fluffy garage rock/power pop.
The Hives’ Tuesday-night show at the was especially good for the mind in that vein. Sometimes you see a band and you’re stuck with an inflated sense of their performance, their importance. The Hives are great fun — always. But they’re hardly great, even though they were better than great — phenomenal, even — that first time I saw them at South by Southwest so many years ago.
Thatap important to be able to recognize such a switch, especially for critics. I remember reading an art collector’s quote years ago at the Denver Art Museum, and he was talking about how he first felt no connection with Picasso’s early work. He dismissed it, as so many others did, only to come back later and see the true genius in those works and the paintings that followed.
This time I’m going the opposite way. The Hives are fun, and sure, I’ll see them again. But no longer am I calling them one of the greatest live bands currently making music — and Spin magazine should reconsider its cover story stating such from a few years back.
But back to the Ogden show. The crowd was into it, but they weren’t as aggro as the last time the Hives played the same venue a few years ago. The band had more fun this time around, playing around with their latest record, “The Black and White Album,” every chance they got.
Entering the stage to the new, spacey lounge track “A Stroll Through Hives Manor Corridors,” the band looked expectedly impeccable in their matching, black-and-white suits. Outside of Almqvist and his antics, the rest of the band plays it totally straight — blank looks of concentration and focus. Itap an aesthetic (some might say shtick) that keeps their shows fresh and interesting.
The band’s concentration isn’t for naught. They play an incredibly tight show, from the playful, boy-band rager “Try It Again” to the ’80s-aping, riff-heavy “You Got It All … Wrong.” Those new tracks fit compactly — neatly, even — into the band’s lengthy set, although neither of them received the warm ovation of the band’s most recent FM single, “Tick Tick Boom,” a song that ripped through the humidity of the room with its undeniable catchiness.
Another high point came with the slightly older “Walk Idiot Walk,” a song that takes on a new life in the live performance. The recorded version on “Tyrannosaurus Hives” has always felt empty and lifeless to me, but those guitars pop and snap in the live performance — giving off the sizzle of a Whopper and the zing of Mickey D’s Special Sauce.
“Hate to Say I Told You So” was of course a blast. The song, responsible for taking them from the rock clubs to the theaters and the auditoriums still resonates, although “Die, All Right!” was a better example of the band’s songwriting at its best. “Main Offender” was hilarious in that the song’s new life as a favorite on the “Guitar Hero” games has made it a true audience favorite.
Ricardo Baca is the Denver Post’s pop music critic.
is a regular contributor to Reverb and The Denver Post.
