Music - The Hives

The Hives may be Sweden's answer to the boy band, if your definition of one includes five Swedes in pressed black and white suits singing about their status as everyone's "Favourite Band." Howlin' Pelle Almqvist and the rest of the cast first broke into the U.S. rock scene in the early 2000s as part of the garage-rock revival. This week, the nouveau boy band return with the appropriately titled The Black and White Album, their third full-length endeavor.

The Hives are most certainly back and ready to rock, and on the first couple tracks they maintain their status as garage-rock kings. The single "Tick Tick Boom" instantly conjures up images of previous hit "Hate to Say I Told You So" with Almqvist's pompous lyrics ("Yeah, I've done it before and I can do it some more") and the rest of the band's invigorating energy. However, it starts going sour with "A Stroll Through Hive Manor Corridors," an unnecessary two-minute organ solo. "T.H.E.H.I.V.E.S." sounds too much like N.E.R.D., courtesy of producer Pharrell Williams, and makes the Hives sound like they belong in a club, surrounded by strippers and copious amounts of drugs. These tracks disrupt the flow and energy that has become so characteristic of the band, but tunes like "Square One Here I Come" and "You Dress Up for Armageddon" manage to tie the album up quite nicely.

Throughout their previous albums, the Hives have managed to cultivate their own distinct sound. This has become so much a part of them that any deviation from this norm sounds uncharacteristic and simply forced. We've gotten used to seeing the Hives trying to blow our faces off all of the time, and that's what we like about them. On Black and White the band may be trying out a new image, but what they really need to do is tell Pharrell to leave them alone and go produce J. Timberlake instead.

-Stefanija Giric