The Hives
The Black and White Album
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
***
The Black and White Album won’t rival the albums it references—the Beatles’ “white album” and Jay-Z’s The Black Album, said August Brown in the Los Angeles Times. But it proves the Hives to be more than a one-trick band. Since breaking out of Sweden’s garage-rock scene, the band has never shown a lack of self-esteem. From 2002’s Your New Favorite Band to 2004’s Tyrannosaurus Hives, the band “becomes bigger with every album,” and this one was originally titled: The World’s First Perfect Album. With their identical, monochromatic outfits and egomaniacal stage names, the Hives had all the marks of a novelty act, said Ben Rayner in the Toronto Star. But they knew it was getting old, so they’ve come back with 14 songs chock full of jaunty hooks, pogo-ing beats, and “shouty choruses that live on for weeks.” At its best, The Black and White Album sounds like a greatest-hits record made up of entirely new material. Spanning the decades, “T.H.E. H.I.V.E.S.” evokes the days of disco while “Giddy Up!” channels the electro-weirdness of Devo. The Hives live up to their “larger-than-life” attitude, said Nick Duerden in Spin. With “a little help from unlikely friends”— producers Pharrell Williams and Modest Mouse’s Dennis Herring—the Hives hold their place as a “good time party band without peer.”
