A conversation with Howlin' Pelle Almqvist of The Hives from 2002
The Swedish dynamo talks about taking underground garage-punk to the top of the pops and the weirdness of playing to celebrities in VIP sections
Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars. This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).
This is a free newsletter, but if you really like what you see, please consider a donation via paid subscription, or visit my PWYC tip jar!
THE OPENERS
As anyone tangentially connected to the music industry can tell you, the L.A. wildfires have displaced countless locals working in all sectors: musicians, producers, promoters, publicists, tour managers, agents, and so forth. This spreadsheet has been circulating on social media over the past week, with links to gofundme pages to help those affected; sadly, the list continues to grow each day. Even if you don’t work in the music industry, you’ll surely recognize some names on there. Please consider donations if you have the means.
The stübermania 2025 playlist is now up and running with 13 tracks that have caught my ear this year. (Some of these were technically released as singles in late 2024, but they’ll appear on albums coming out in the next few weeks.) I’ll be updating the playlist each week with new selections that I’ll highlight in upcoming newsletters—here’s what you’ll find in this week’s starter pack:
Franz Ferdinand, “The Doctor”: When I interviewed Alex Kapranos recently, I asked him if this adrenalized highlight from The Human Fear was inspired at all by his time working with Sparks, and he said no, but to me, it sounds like the perfect spiritual sequel to the FFS fave “Police Encounters.”
Charlie Houston, “Pink Cheetah Print Slip”: Answers the question, “What if Chappell Roan went full “Deceptacon?”
Lambrini Girls, “No Homo”: Apropos of this week’s headline interview below, this kind of sounds like The Hives, if The Hives were two unruly British women singing about self-repressed queer lust.
Horsegirl, “2468”: This teaser from the Chicago indie-pop trio’s upcoming Matador release, Phonetics On and On (out Feb. 14), taps into the nonsensical numerology of Water From Your Eyes’ joyously anarchic 2023 single “Barley” but retrofits it to the galloping hypno-jangle-punk of The Feelies’ Crazy Rhythms.
Ela Minus, “QQQQ”: The Brooklyn-via-Bogota producer’s second album, DÍA (out this Friday), is already making an early beeline for my Best of 2025 list, by seamlessly fusing big dance-tent bops with sinister electro energy.
Destroyer (feat. Fiver), “Bologna”: If Kaputt was Dan Bejar’s Avalon, then the lead single from Dan’s Boogie (out March 28) suggests he’s going Moon Safari. (If you’re unfamiliar with guest vocalist Fiver—a.k.a. Toronto roots-rock lifer Simone Schmidt—then definitely seek out their 2021 country-jazz tour de force, Fiver With the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition.)
Prison, “In the Tall Grass/Made for You”: In its transition from Dylan-esque folk-song sketch to caterwauling, sax-blaring boogie jam, this two-for-one combo from the Rockaway Beach band plays out like the Newport climax of A Complete Unknown if it were directed by ‘80s Richard Kern. (Their second album, Downstate, drops on Drag City on Jan. 31.)
Amultets feat. Midwife, “Lifelike”: The ASMR mastermind behind one of my favourite records of 2024, Midwife, is already back with some new music—in this case, a suitably spectral lead-vocal feature on this hauntological dronegaze hymn from Portland soundscaper Amulets.
Mogwai, “God Gets You Back”: Latter-day Mogwai albums tend to be evenly divided among sci-fi synth set pieces, vocoderized shoegazy pop songs, and the slowly ascending post-rock epics on which their brand was built. But with this track, they pull off the remarkable feat of tapping into all of those modes simultaneously.
SPELLLING, “Portrait of My Heart”: The opening title track on the new album (out March 28) from Bay Area art-pop auteur Chrystia Cabral comes out swinging, with stormy strings and barb-wired guitar lines entwining to create a widescreened spy-movie soundtrack for the various dramas racing through your mind as you spend January curled up in your bedroom with the blinds closed.
Art D’Ecco, “Serene Demon”: This B.C. glam-rock revisionist is wearing less make-up these days, but he’s still very much chasing his wildest stardust-sprinkled pop fantasies, and with this majestic seven-minute suite, he’s crafted a “Bohemian Rhapsody” to call his own (albeit with a lot less opera and a little more funk).
Porridge Radio, “Don’t Want to Dance”: This time five years ago, just prior to the release of their astonishing second album, Every Bad, I would’ve bet on Porridge Radio becoming one of the most vital indie-rock bands of the decade. But the pandemic had other plans. While the Brighton group continued to release great records post-lockdown (including last year’s Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me), they never seemed to regain the critical momentum they had rolling into those early months of 2020. So with the upcoming EP, The Machine Starts to Sing (out Feb. 21), they’re bidding us farewell, and this gently swaying folk ballad captures the sound of a band waving the white flag with equal amounts of defeatism and defiance.
Ethel Cain, “Amber Waves”: Everyone’s talking about how Perverts is a big fuck you to Ethel’s normie fans, but what if it’s actually a sincere attempt to get more Swifties onto the Kranky Records mailing list? That said, the album isn’t all avant-garde antagonism: The reward for sitting through all those 13-minute drone pieces is this serene 11-minute slowcore reverie.
Click here for the Apple Music version of the playlist
THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist
The date: May 26, 2002
Location: Pelle was calling in from San Diego; I was in my kitchen in Toronto
Publication: Eye Weekly
Album being promoted: Technically, Veni Vidi Vicious, an album that was already two years old at this point, but this interview was held in advance of The Hives’ first-ever Toronto show.
The context: When a promo copy of The Hives’ Veni Vidi Vicious arrived at the Eye Weekly offices in the fall of 2000, it became an instant heavy-rotation staple on the in-house stereo. To me, they sounded like the brattier kid brothers of the New Bomb Turks (a.k.a. my favourite ‘90s-punk band). As such, I figured The Hives would be the kind of band that could maybe draw a hundred people to a gig in the dingy ground-floor space of the El Mocambo, as that was pretty much the audience limit for any similarly insolent garage band—like the Chrome Cranks or Demolition Doll Rods—that rolled through town in the late-’90s. (It’s impossible to overstate just how unpopular and niche garage-punk was in the pre-Strokes/Stripes era.) This, of course, assumes The Hives would ever have the resources to tour North America, given that they hailed from Fagersta, a small town in Sweden I had never heard of.
Fast forward 16 months, and I’m watching The Hives receive a Beatlemania-type reception at the fabled Astoria theatre in London, England, at the precise moment when a U.K.-released compilation, Your New Favourite Band, transformed them into Britain’s new favourite band. (The collection was released by Alan McGee’s new Poptones imprint, and proved he still had some kingmaking pixie dust leftover from his Creation Records days.) This Eye Weekly cover-story interview with lead singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist happened a few months after that London show, and a few weeks prior to The Hives’ sold-out Toronto show at the 2,000-capacity Kool Haus.
I’ll let the introduction from that article set the scene for the conversation that follows:
"How many of you are here tonight because you love us and all of our songs?"
Hives frontman Howlin' Pelle Almqvist throws the question out mid-set to the 2,200-strong crowd at the Astoria, an old theatre in London's Soho district that, on this rainy February night, has been transformed into a sweaty, steamy, pogoing mass of black shirts and white ties. Given that the show had been sold out for weeks, the crowd responds to Almqvist's query with a roar that makes a jet's takeoff feel like a sigh.
But Almqvist has another question, this time directed at the balcony, part of which has been partitioned into a VIP section where members of Blur and The Divine Comedy are clinking drinks. "How many of you are here tonight because you wanted to be seen in your nicest clothes at the hottest show in town?" Almqvist's Swedish accent has a way of making the cockiest comments seem playfully innocent, but like their songs—the CEO-baiting rock 'n' roll swindle fantasy of "Die, All Right!" for one—The Hives' jokes are ringing truer with each passing day.
At the time, the February show felt like the storybook climax to this tale of small-town Swedish punks turned British pop royalty: the Astoria was The Hives' biggest headlining gig to date, they were NME cover stars and they had just gone gold for Your New Favourite Band, a U.K. compilation (released on Alan McGee's Poptones imprint) that mixed choice cuts from their 2000 hellraiser, Veni Vidi Vicious, with early tracks. But instead of peaking, The Hives just kept selling. And selling. Last month, the band sold out London's 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy; their American distributor, Epitaph, just sold the rights to Veni Vidi Vicious to Warner Brothers, who are relaunching the album in North America; and the band is getting more celebrity guest-list requests than an Oscar after-party.
The Brits have chalked up Hives-mania as a natural outgrowth of post-Strokes rockaphilia, but the truly amazing thing about it is that the type of rock 'n' soul music The Hives play—a spastic, primal noise that echos The Sonics, Dead Boys and New Bomb Turks—has never been the domain of pop charts or large concert halls. A year ago, bands like The Hives would be lucky to get a hundred garage-rock greaseballs out to some dive.
How’s America treating you?
This time, it’s really easy. All the shows have been sold out for quite some time. The last time was a bit harder—the shows weren’t really hard work, but the driving between the shows was hard, because we were in a van and it was kind of a long distance. It was just dress, eat, play, drive again.
How are you holding up physically?
I’m holding up okay, actually. It goes both ways—it’s sort of like working out every day. At the same time you’re getting worn out, you’re working out as well. I had a busted shoulder, but I’ve had that for years, and it probably won’t be getting better. When we have some time off, maybe I’ll get it fixed.
Veni Vidi Vicious is almost two years old now—I imagine you wouldn’t mind working on new stuff at this point?
Exactly! We like all the songs, we’re not bored of it—which is kind of fantastic, because it’s two years old, but we would really like to have something new to play, too.
Are you playing any new songs on this tour?
No, because we kind of want to keep it a secret too, so that when we get the new album out, you haven’t heard all the songs. I would like it to be a new album that comes out, rather than having you hear it all on tour.
And you don’t want versions of songs floating around on the internet that sound like shit.
Exactly, and that also aren’t the final version either. We want it to feel like the songs have come out of nowhere—even though they don’t. But if you have 10 different versions on the internet, you don’t really get that either.
Last year, before signing to Poptones, had you already given up on Veni Vidi Vicious and were starting to plot the next record?
No, we hadn’t really. If all this didn’t happen, I guess we probably would’ve gotten around to do a new record this year. I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter. We had been touring for, like, one year at the time the Poptones record came out, but that was a good enough reason to tour until it’s popular! There’s still a lot of people that haven’t heard it that probably would like it.
Maybe people who bought the Spider-Man soundtrack will get converted.
That seems to be our job description nowadays.
Warner Brothers is going to be reissuing Veni Vidi Vicious. Did the prospect of hooking up with a major label result in a big debate within the band?
We didn’t really sign with them—Epitaph sold us to them. We really didn’t have a decision. But other than that, I can’t talk about that.
Just a year ago, it seemed crazy that a band like the Hives would command this sort of mainstream attention…
Actually, I think that it’s crazier that a lot of the bands that are popular are mainstream! It’s a lot crazier that Puddle of Mudd is actually more of a mainstream band than we are. If anything, it just makes more sense!
It is a weird feeling to know that you’re selling way more records than your heroes, like the New Bomb Turks or the Oblivians, ever did?
I don’t know if it’s weird. We love all those bands. There was never a big audience for that type of thing before and we knew that. It’s a different situation now, I guess.
What made you guys breaking out so amazing was that this kind of music usually plays to the same hundred people in every city…
Yeah, I know. I was one of those hundred people!
Do you feel like you have a duty to give back to the community?
On this tour we actually have members from the Oblivians supporting us and the New Bomb Turks supporting us, too. Supporting the community is not something we necessarily think about, we just bring on tour whatever bands we like. It doesn’t matter if they’re garage-punk, or instrumental bands—if we like it, we like it. We don’t really think of it as a matter of genres, I don’t think we ever have.
What other stuff are you into?
Anything: hard rock, old punk rock. Our first love as a band is probably ’77-style punk rock, and then we sort of moved back to garage rock and ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll, but there’s also ‘80s new wave… anything from ‘80s pop music to old country ‘n’ western and R&B.
Do you feel vindicated now that you’re playing to the sort of audiences that would’ve beaten you up when you were a teenager?
I don’t know. I don’t really think about it that way. Because it doesn’t feel like that kind of audience. I don’t really know if I feel vindicated like that—if enough people like it, that’s fine, if they don’t… I have a hard time relating to the view of vindication. Because if someone who beats me up actually starts liking me, I don’t feel vindicated. If someone beats you up, you want them to hate you, don’t you? You don’t have to have any base knowledge to like a band. You can just like it for whatever it is. You don’t have to know all the references or know why it sounds the way it does—if you like it, that’s fine. People tell us we remind them of all kinds of things, and some of them we might not even like. If they think we sound like KISS and they like us for that reason, that’s fine, because I know we don’t sound like KISS!
Has your approach to performance changed since you’ve gone from playing to small groups of people to the sort of venues that have VIP sections?
Well, we make a bunch of cracks about the small people as well. I do feel weird about that sometimes—the whole VIP section thing. I have a hard time relating, because I was never let in. The performance has changed in a way that we have to make everything bigger and more obvious, because if there’s a hundred people and it’s a small room, everybody notices everything you do. And the interaction with the audience becomes a lot longer [in larger rooms], because it’s just a big crowd, so you have to make everything a lot more obvious—sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s…. it’s just different. I don’t know if I like one or the other better. We like to do both, so when we tour bigger places, we try to do a small show at a bar during the tour. That’s the advantage of being in a popular band: You can go into any small club and just say ‘hey we want to play tonight!’
Do you ever worry things have gotten too big, too fast for you, and that you won’t be able to have the same sort of connection with crowds in bigger venues?
No, it’s worked fine, actually. Because our music is very sort of basic boom-crash—you can get it on a very basic level and just nod your head to it, and that’s what people mostly do I guess.
Has your experience in the past few months confirmed your worst fears about the music industry, or is it not so bad?
Yeah, I’d go with (a). But we always knew that—everybody knows it’s crap. No big secret. A lot of bands have done both [indie and major labels], and the only time they were good was before, when they were on the smaller labels. But I don’t think there’s a difference—like, do major labels screw bands any more than indie labels? I don’t think there’s necessarily a difference: It’s just people to people.
Do you see the Hives evolving? Or do you want to hold onto that wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am rock ‘n’ roll-swindle attitude?
We used to have these rules about how we could only make three records, then we’d have to quit the band. But we’re working on our third record now, and our drummer is already going, “Ah, maybe a fourth one?” But that’s where everything goes wrong, I guess. We have a lot of music that we still want to make, all different kinds of music we want to try out, but it has to fit in with our idea of what the band is. It has to be very direct, no matter what it is.
Do you look at the mistakes your favourite bands made as a cautionary tale of what not to do?
Yeah. That was almost the intention of forming the band at all—you could actually do that, just see where everything went wrong for other bands and not do the same things. I didn’t think this would happen, but I have noticed that the idea of where things went wrong for a band sort of changed as you got a bit older. When I was 16, I thought as soon as bands started playing a bit slower, they became crap. Now, I can actually appreciate it… the bands that we used as the map for only making three records, now I can actually appreciate their fourth records.
Well, I did notice you have an acoustic performance online.
We’re trying to stop that. It was a bad day.
ENCORES
For those keeping count, The Hives have not only surpassed their original three-album rule, they’ve doubled it—in 2023, they released their sixth record, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, which featured my favourite song of theirs since their Veni Vidi Vicious heyday.
Fun fact: The Hives’ 2012 single “Go Right Ahead” features a co-writing credit from Jeff Lynne, though he actually had nothing to do with creating the track, which features a riff uncannily similar to ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” and thus required Lynne’s blessing to keep things legally kosher.
The story of The Hives is a reminder that the early-2000s garage-rock explosion had a very long fuse, which was sparked by a number of unsung garage-rock bands—The Gories, The Makers, and Cheater Slicks to name just a few—grinding it out in the late-’80s and ‘90s dive-bar circuit. New Bomb Turks frontman/music journo Eric Davidson explored this oft-overlooked groundswell in his 2010 book, We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut: 1988-2001, which you can preview here.
This is a free newsletter, but if you really like what you see, please consider a donation via paid subscription, or visit my PWYC tip jar!