Toronto – It’s been awhile since the Hives visited Canada’s best city, so when it was announced earlier this summer that the Hives were returning to Toronto to open for Maroon 5, I am pretty sure most fans were all like ‘whaaaaaaaa’ then probably went on to make some joke about Maroon 5 being pansy ass bitches. Luckily, the Hives recognize this slight, and scheduled a show at the Phoenix for a mere 13$. Awesome. Naturally, given this city’s massive Scandanavian population, the show sold out within weeks.
The atmosphere at show was quite excitable. If you know anything about the Hives, you know they put on a good show. It was Wednesday, which is statistically the hardest day of the week, so I am sure the crowd was raring for a good time. I am sure the Hives are a band that really, really, really want to please its fans, as they came on at 9:30. NINE THIRTY. Who comes on at nine thirty? (well the Beautiful South did last year) but seriously, that’s awesome. Maybe I am showing my age here, but really, that is quite delish.
Dressed in matching private school boys uniforms, the Hives quickly went right into one of their trademark two minute songs, whose name escapes me now. I’ll admit it, I can realistically name maybe eight Hives tunes. One of them is ‘Hate to Say I Told You So’, which they busted out early in the set to get everyone going. The lead singer, Howlin Pelle, is arguably one of the best front man doing shows today. He works HARD to get the crowd going, dances and does crazy stuff during songs and consistantly talks between songs. Sometimes I think the length of his between song banters is actually longer then each song. Actually, thats probably true. The dudes pretty funny, and after watching lamewads Alex Turner (of Arctic Monkeys) and Paul Banks (of Interpol) do absolutely nothing on stage at V Fest, this was a nice refreshment.
so the next hour consisted of a blend of new and old songs, leaning more towards the old then the new. Apparantly they have a new album coming out, and according to Pelle, its ‘very good’ and they were listening to it before the show to get them revved up. The only sad thing about the concert is that you know that the Hives are a pretty limited band, in terms of what they can do musically. It’d be awesome to see someone with the frontmans charisma on a err better band. But hey, what can you do?
The first set ended with their current single “Tick Tick Boom” which is currently also on NHL 08, so if its sounds familliar, this is why. The encore consisted of Supply and Demand, Main Offender and some new song which sounds like it can be a hit. Overall, the Hives put on an excellent show and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
4/5