Music Review: The Hives -- Tyrannosaurus Hives

Or, How to Serve the Master Without Eating Bugs


The moment that made me realize that Rock really was coming back into fashion was the moment I first saw the video to "Hate to Say I Told You So" by the Hives. It was perfection itself: perfect guitar riff, bass solo (!), Howlin' Pelle Almqvist screaming and preening and carrying on like Mick Jagger circa 1966. I liked the aesthetic of the video, too: Blazing white background, matching suits for the band, freezing members in mid-jump when their instruments dropped out. It was the best video I'd seen in years, and the best new song I'd heard in years, and it made me do something I hadn't done in years, if ever: run out and by a CD based solely on a music video.

Holding that CD in my hand made me see the direction the Hives had taken with the retro genre: Play like the Sonics, look like N'Sync: Bright and shiny and electronic. An Exploding Plastic Inevitable for the new Age. Sure, I dug the Strokes and the Stripes and Los Vinos for what they brought to the picture, and probably agreed that Jack n' Meg were the most artistically daring with their soulful, minimalist bump n'grind. But Pelle and the Boys had the "Makes Me Jump Up and Down" award, down pat.

That was then. A few years later, and how fare the New Rock Quadrifecta? The White Stripes knocked a lot of socks off with Elephant, a record that improved on White Blood Cells in the quality of the songs and the satisfying way they click together. The Strokes, more cautiously perhaps, followed up Is This It with Room on Fire, also an improvement, but far less obviously so. The Vines opened with a great deal of promise on their first album, but have come apart, as yours truly predicted, on Nicholls' drug issues and are presently swirling the drain. The Hives are the last in with their sophomore effort, and in Tyrannosaurus Hives, have given us what amounts to an enigma.

The first time I listened to it in my car, I was frankly disappointed with the first half of the CD. It sounded like them, but they sounded almost neutered, trebly and sparky, with none of the balls-to-the-wall explosion that propelled the first album. It wasn't until "B is for Brutus" that I found a song that stayed with me longer than it's playing time, and it wasn't until "See Through Head" I found a song I enjoyed, and it wasn't until "Diabolic Scheme" that I found a song I'd call good. After those three songs, everything melded slowly back to inconspicuousness. Aware as I was that the band was planning a more severe departure for this album, and aware as I was that their new label, Interscope, had balked, I concluded that the boys had taken the path of least resistance, got a few "different" songs on the record for the critics, and made the rest a half-assed retread of Veni Vidi Vicious.

Yet for some reason, I couldn't stop listening. At first it was for the three songs I'd deemed worthy, then I decided that the new single "Walk Idiot Walk" wasn't too bad, then I started bobbing my head to the other songs as well. Somehow, subconsciously, they'd wormed their way in and had their way with me. And here I sit at the keyboard, unable to explain how this happened.

When in doubt, I go to the cover art. The Hives have apparently decided that the best background for their slick ties-and-spats look is a sickly, scaly green (some connection here, no doubt, with the "Tyrannosaurus"). Instead of a picture of a band, they go for a drawn slight-caricature (others have noted that it makes Pelle look like a Clockwork Orange-era Malcolm McDowell). It looks deliberately ugly, and not in the typical punk-rock, it's-so-ugly-it's-cool way, but rather in the way that makes you not want to look at it. Why on earth would the Hives, who have made a name for themselves in cheery self-idolization ("This is your new favorite band" bellowed the sticker on their first album), go out of their way to mess with their image? It's not as though they've stopped bragging about themselves. Word has come quietly through the rock press that they're the best live band of all the NRQ. So what's the deal? Are they actually disowning their second album, as a label-ruined monstruosity?

I found an answer where I first found joy, in "Diabolic Scheme," a murky exercise in feedback and gloom. "They sound like vampires," I thought, and then it hit me. The Hives are vampires, the new vampires of rock. That is not to suggest any affinity with Alice Cooper/Misfits horror-core burlesque. I'm thinking of the vampire in an Ann Rice novel, shiny and beautiful and masterful, and empty inside. They raise undead sounds (channelling Jagger a hell of a lot better than Jagger himself, these days) to precise, almost machine-like precision (can you imagine these guys jamming?), and use it to say... nothing in particular (I haven't read the lyrics in the liner notes, have you?). They even dress like vampires, right down to the spats, eschewing capes probably out of diligence to the garage-rock aesthetic and not wanting to evoke the aforesaid Alice Cooper.

I'm fully aware that all this may be the result of too much caffeine, but I think it makes all the pieces click into place. How else to explain their aristocratic relationship with critics and fans ("Look into my eyes...We are your new favorite band..."), or the mystery man who actually writes the songs? As Dracula with Renfeld, so the Hives with Randy FitzSimmons. And like real vampires, they don't tell anyone, leaving only certain encodes signs for the wary. They hide their true face behind a shiny mask, sucking your twelve dollars away, and leaving you feeling wierd, drained, and for some reason hungry to repeat the experience.

Or was that all of mass culture? I get so confused sometimes.