“Do you want to have a good time?” Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, frontman of The Hives, asked the 2000-odd people gathered at Forum on Saturday night.
“Well, let’s see if there’s anything we can do about that,” Pelle called back to the crowd of boisterous punters. Cue the kind of explosive garage punk rock that ricochets off the Renaissance ceiling and cascades down the Spanish Baroque walls. Welcome to The Hives.
In anticipation of the release of their seventh studio album – The Hives Forever Forever The Hives, coming August 29 – the Swedish garage rock band took on Naarm’s Forum Theatre for two nights over the weekend. For longtime Hives fans, it was a welcomed return to the eccentric world of the Scandinavian weirdos. For new fans, no doubt it was a wild ride.
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The Tom Cruise of rock’n’roll
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Between catwalks up and down the stage as the band paraded around in their tuxedo-like suits and frontman Pelle tossing the microphone in the air at least a dozen times throughout the evening, there was barely a moment to blink – let alone grab another beer – amongst the chaos that ensued. Known for their eccentricity and performatively outrageous shows, The Hives left no stone unturned in their mission to have a good time – and to make sure we all did too.
“They call me the Tom Cruise of rock’n’roll,” Pelle asserted to the crowd. As if to prove it, the animated middle-aged man ran around the stage with the energy of a hyperactive child, crawling over amps. When there was a moment between songs for him to take a breath, he instead spent it on more ridiculous banter with the audience. And they were lapping it up.
While the seemingly-nonsensical forays into one-sided conversation that Pelle conducted from the front of the theatre could have come across as arrogant in the hands of any other artist, the rock star and his bandmates have as much class in one perfectly-maintained strand of Swedish hair on their heads than most do in an entire body of work. For all their antics, The Hives loves their audience. They respect them too much to not make fun of them. And they respect rock music too much to not have fun with it.
Whether he felt like the energy was dipping or he was just looking around for something even more outrageous to say than the last attempt at spicy banter, Pelle broke up the night with multiple calls to the audience. “Ladies,” he’d yell. “Gentlemen,” he’d add. “Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else.” Even by the fifth go at this, everyone was still laughing.
The Hives take the crown
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They’ve been called one of the best live rock bands in the world, and each song felt like they were still out to prove it. If the call out to the audience wasn’t enough to grab their attention, The Hives’ hold-no-bounds demonstrations of garage rock most definitely was. In the crowd-favourite Hate To Say I Told You So, the crowd was the choir, chanting the lyrics back to the band when the microphone was pointed in their direction. We all became working bees in the hive of garage rock.
For all their silliness, The Hives are in possession of that specific kind of irreverent humour that endears Aussie audiences. Perhaps because, in some way, Swedish silliness is not so unlike our own. That, and Pelle also manages to pronounce our city’s name correctly – a feat not yet accomplished by nearly any US musician.
“The Sydney crowd were louder,” Pelle told us with a naughty smile. An onslaught of good-humoured boos and disgruntled disagreements tumbled like a wave throughout the crowd. “And we haven’t even been to Sydney yet,” Pelle added, a copious amount of cheek underlining the joke. Only someone on the inside of the joke can get away with making it.
“We are very far away from home,” Pelle said toward the end of the show. “As far as you could get. But we feel at home. I wish we could stay forever.” Well, Pelle, we’d be happy to have you.
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