Elusive, faceless and frankly, a complete mystery, it appears Randy Fitzsimmons is no longer with us. “He wrote all the songs, which was very important”, The Hives’ bassist Nicholaus Arson re-affirmed to NME earlier this year, paying tribute to the fictional character who allegedly masterminded their entire discography. As with most statements made by the band, it’s crucial to the enjoyment of their work to not take things too seriously or literally.
Fitzsimmons’ demise, they say, held the key to the first record from the Swedish five-piece in over a decade, emerging from his ashes with a “soon to be award-winning album.” These were the words of frontman Pelle Almqvist, joking around with stadium crowds throughout a summer in support of Arctic Monkeys’ mammoth UK tour.
There’s no messing about on ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons’, introduced via the riff-tastic lead single ‘Bogus Operandi’. There’s a similar anthemic nature to ‘Smoke & Mirrors’, a nostalgic mid-point on what’s otherwise a rapid-fire album. The prospect of sharing a stage with the Monkeys may well have rubbed off on ‘What Did I Ever Do To You?’, their own answer to ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ Armed with a strikingly similar riff, it’s as experimental as the quintet gets, with a lyrical randomness that’s straight out of Alex Turner’s book: “You have fallen / And broken your collarbone.”
Every move they make feels purely instinctive, and that’s the beauty of it. “This has to be fucking stupid and childish”, Almqvist told NME of ‘Trapdoor Solution’, a 63-second injection of punk rock that borders on the speed of light. Its reckless younger sibling is ‘The Bomb’, a call and response rollercoaster in the name of a mega night out. While they might be approaching the back end of their forties, The Hives still party harder than the rest of us combined.
The pace is so obscenely high, that the bounce of ‘Crash Into The Weekend’ even feels like a breather, a teaser for the sheer carnage that’s about to go down, which extends into next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. As album closer ‘Step Out Of The Way’ warns “Step out of the way if you can’t take the pace”.
Having spent 11 years away from the studio, The Hives zapped straight back into the only mode they know: pure pandemonium. It’s about time new generations received this healthy dose of old school Hives, packed with the same intensity, goofiness – and of course, the matching black and white suits. It’s what Randy Fitzsimmons would have wanted.
