Swedish garage rockers The Hives arrived on these shores in 2001 with an album on Poptones that (with typical understatement from label boss Alan McGee) sold them as Your New Favourite Band.
The Strokes probably stole that moniker at the time, but the Swedes burned brightly for a few years before slipping into the background.
This fifth album doesn't stray far from the formula that made them one of the best live bands on the circuit: unadorned rock'n'roll played with punk intensity and festooned with pop hooks. Taken track by track, none of the new songs is as triumphantly catchy as early singles Hate To Say I Told You So, Supply And Demand and Main Offender; but from singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's call to arms on the opener onwards (song title Come On repeated about 60 times in 68 minutes), this is music with good times embedded in its DNA.
Certain songs wear fan-boy badges on their sleeves (I Want More's riff is surely Joan Jett's I Love Rock'N'Roll revisited) but that's easy to forgive in a band whose attitude to pop history is simply to filter The Rolling Stones through The Ramones.
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