We’ve reached that time of year where Southern Californians can rejoice in festival magic. Yes, Coachella is here and this year it’s bigger than ever. For those unaware of the changes made to the schedule, the festival is now a two-weekend event. Due to the rapid selling of tickets, the same line-up will play two weeks in a row. Given that these artists will be waiting a week after one gig to play the same place a week later, it means that during that week many of those artists will bring their wonderful music to smaller venues around the Southern California (more specifically: Los Angeles) area. In anticipation of the festival and these shows, we’ll be dedicating the next two Artists of the Week to the festival that brings us Southern Californians a plethora of excellent music. This week we’ve got the always entertaining Hives as our artist of the week.
Perhaps known best for their early 2000’s rise to fame with their hit album Veni Vidi Vicious, the Hives had been paving their way in the garage rock world years before. The Hives formed as teens in 1993 in Fagersta, Sweden with Nicholaus Arson, Howlin’ Pelle Armqvist, Dr. Matt Destruction, Vigilante Carlstroem, and Chris Dangerous. Taking on the sharply-dressed, aggressive persona the Swedish quintet belted out fast, catchy garage rock tunes that would come to make the band internationally popular. In 1995 the band signed with Burning Heart and released their debut EP, Oh Lord! When? How? This was followed two years later by their first full-length album, Barely Legal, though “full-length” may be a stretch as their goal was to make 30-minute albums…which they did. Successfully. For their first three albums.
With the arrival of Veni Vidi Vicious in 2001 and Tyrannosaurus Hives in 2004 the world saw the gritty, intense, fast-paced sound that these Swedes could pump out. The three-minute song and the thirty-minute album were working extremely well and their popularity was skyrocketing to where the Hives became a household name. The case was the same in the house of Pharrell Williams, a producer whose main experience was with hip hop. Pharrell wanting to take a dive into the world of rock, and the Hives taking their first trip with a major label, the two got together to make some good tunes, which resulted in 2007’s Black and White album. Showing maturity with a side of grunge, the band was able to release even more hit singles while still maintaining the core persona that they’d been perfecting for the past 14 years, proving that they still had what it took to rock faces while moving their drive for half-hour albums in a different direction.
One of the things I find respectable (and pretty nifty) about the Hives is that they are able to put out excellent music in English despite it being a second language. While Sweden may teach English to students at an early age, and 89% of the population claims at least basic conversational skills in the English language, the fact that the band strives to appeal to a larger market is admirable. That the band did appeal to a larger audience and has become incredibly famous makes them all the more admirable in this blogger’s opinion.
As mentioned earlier, the Hives will be in the Southern California area for the Coachella music festival. While here they’ll play a few shows outside of the festival, meaning that if you happen to be in the area, hurry up and get yourself a ticket if you don’t have one already. And should that fail, you can catch their next album, Lex Hives, on sale later on this year. But before you do any of that, as always, get your fix below. Enjoy!
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