Thursday, May 10th 2012

News:  The Hives

The Hives Drop Fresh Performance Video for ‘Go Right Ahead’

By Skwerl

We had all but written off The Hives by the end of 2002. But they have since established themselves as one of the most tenacious bands in all of contemporary Rock N’ Roll, doing their thing by any means necessary since ’94 or so, through success and failure, with major label support coming and going, but always putting in their fair share of independent labor. Their recent performances at Coachella, and in San Francisco with Refused, have convinced us that their right to the stage has been kept in good standing all along, and it has been our loss for overlooking their work.

Here’s their new video for Go Right Ahead, the lead single from their forthcoming full length Lex Hives due out June 5th.

If any ELO fans feel compelled to crawl out from under their Corvettes to scream rip-off, Hives frontman Pelle Almqvist offered the following mea culpa in an interview with… what is this, a website? Apparently, he did the interview with an advertisement for Heineken.

We made the song, and we were really happy with the song. But months later we realised that it sounded a lot like ELO’s ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’, so we contacted Jeff Lynns and basically gave him a cut off the songwriting. It wasn’t intentional though. Somehow subconsciously that ELO track was probably where it came from.

Anyway, the track is fun, but more notably, the performance showcases the band’s razor-sharp dynamics, perfected over their many years of generally not giving a single fuck about anything other than doing their thing. So, hats off to The Hives.