“Is it true what they say about it? They say it’s new but I have to doubt it” – ‘Walk Idiot Walk’
Say Oasis hadn’t put out ‘Be Here Now’. Say, for instance, they’d mixed the choice chunks from ‘Definitely Maybe’ and ‘Morning Glory’, repackaged them and named it ‘Yer Mad Fer Us, Y’Are’. How things could have been so different. And so The Hives crawled immaculately tailored out of the North Sea back in 2001, electrifying tunes clasped tightly between their teeth, followed by an armada of pomposity – we were taken aback by the spectacle and we applauded, as did you, probably. Little did we realise at the time we were actually applauding Alan McGee and Poptones’ audacious instinct for condensing the band’s existence, flushing the effluence away, putting out a best-of and instead selling us a spotless, sanitised debut. So what now? Now that we expect a consistency from what should now be Our Favourite Band (it’s been a few years) and already know that ‘Barely Legal’ and ‘Veni Vidi Viscous’ had their gems, but were only really effective together?
Well of course they’ve gone and made to order. They’re more adept businessmen than a creative collective, you can see that, can’t you? From solidifying themselves on the cover as the cartoon stereotype that has made them, to the ridiculous self-promoting and very male title, to rolling out the not-exactly-A-Level-science formula fourteen times without daring to risk letting up, the album flies by in a genuine frantic blur of excitement. The main concern must be that you don’t bring it into too sharp a focus, because it is all like clockwork. They must surely have a masseuse on board to sort out the RSI. Single ‘Walk Idiot Walk’ stands out from the back-forth-back-forth-back-forth comfort of the rest of the album by sounding like a heroically elastic The Who. It’s sandwiched by two near identical 3 chord blasts ‘Two-Timing Touch And Broken Bones’ and ‘No Pun Intended’ which only helps its cause. ‘A Little More For Little You’ and ‘Dead Quote Olympics’ get props too, sounding like Slade and The Clash respectively. There’s little to separate it from ‘Your New Favourite Band’, but that could be the problem. They make the pass, just, and all without cheating this time.