The Hives @ The Glasshouse, Pomona. 4-16-12.

Your New Favorite Band

Monday, April 16th was an awesome day. It was the start of my five day vacation from work. I had watched 2Pac & At The Drive-In rise from the dead the night before on my laptop (technology FTW) and prepared for my trip to San Francisco the next day. That, and I saw The Hives perform for the first time since 2008. You see, anytime one sees The Hives perform is cause for celebration.

 The Hives are like comfort food. There's really nothing fancy or complex about them. Their sound is simple and easy to digest. You can always kind of guess what you're in for when you come across this band but that's fine because they're so damn delicious it doesn't matter. They play punk infused rock 'n' roll, usually at high speeds. Song lengths are short, choruses are catchy and their fans, rabid. In the early 2000's when all the "The" bands broke big during the garage rock revival thing, The Hives were hot shit here in America as well as around the globe. The cool thing about The Hives was that they didn't try to act cool like all their American counterparts, they embraced the absurdity of their rockstar/celebrity status and they widely heralded themselves as, the greatest band on Earth. After seeing them live, even their most cynical detractors usually agree.

...And top hats for all

So they booked this special little headlining gig at The Glass House in Pomona following their performance at Coachella the previous day and before they headed up North to perform with Refused in San Francisco. Seeing The Hives twice in one week? HELL YES. Shit, it's usually years before I see these dudes play again.

The thing about The Hives is, they're excellent salesmen. They always play new songs off whatever album they're currently promoting. Right now they're trying to hype their forthcoming album, Lex Hives. Understandably they played a crap load of new material. Usually I don't like it when bands do this, especially when I've never heard any of songs before. Not so with The Hives. They could literally play the phone book and it would rule. So all the new songs sounded pretty rad (especially "Wait a Minute") but everyone went truly bonkers when they played older stuff like:

Yes, they're wearing matching tuxedos & top hats. Yes, their road crew consists of NINJAS.

Even though Pelle claimed he was sick, he and his band of Swedish rockers put on one hell of a show. Like the most fun I'd had since Clinton was in office. Jumping, singing, smiling, rocking the fuck out. It's also a nice change of pace to get hot and sweaty with girls. Like actual breathing females in the crowd. I'm used to the cold trophy girlfriends at all the metal shows I frequent, these were like flesh and blood rocker gals who were dancing and crowd surfing all night! I welcome the change of pace.



So The Hives headlining gig was amazing. It's a crying shame they don't release albums more frequently/tour The States every year. Well lucky me was about to embark on a 6 hour road trip the next day and catch The Hives opening for Refused in San Francisco later in the week. But that's for the next post...