2002: #7 - "Hate to Say I Told You So"

On "Hate To Say I Told You So", The Hives were unwittingly compared to The Who and The Kinks by out of touch rock journalists, desperate to fling some organic-sounding, familiar comparisons around (and attach some critical importance to a modern band not named Radiohead).

To us, however, the riff in "Hate To Say I Told You So" sounded more like a semi-calculated, stripped-down faux-garage reboot of Nirvana's "Stay Away", and being compared to a canonical 90's alternative band is no better or worse than being compared to a canonical 60's hippie bands, it's just the truth.

On their records at the time, The Hives seemed more like a glossy, Swede version of midwestern 90's punk-revival band - New Bomb Turks, Gaunt, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. They later adapted some more new-wavey and pop-punk elements, quite welcome to our ears, but disliked intensely by fair-weather fans and critics alike.

We don't know which comparisons the faux-punk Hives would dig less - they seem to fashion themselves as kind of a mod-influenced Stooges, though the only similarities there are that the frontman screams a bit and wears a suit - but we think they'd agree with us that the tune rocks pretty hard despite all its glossy baggage and the critical handwringing that that leads to.