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The Hives: Astoria, London

Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 19 December 2001

WITH ROCK'S CURRENT favourite flavour being the three-chord thrashing of the Strokes and White Stripes, the Hives couldn't have picked a better moment to offer their Swedish-accented version. If, that is, they really are from the rock'n'roll backwater of Fagersta, Sweden, as Poptones Records claims; they sound absolutely New York, and only their ludicrous nicknames — Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, Vigilante Carlstroem and so on — reveal them as Scandinavian pastiche-merchants. Yet they're so fluent in the language of punchy riffs that by the end of their 40-minute set the words "Abba" and "Cardigans" are banished from the mind.

Total word count of piece: 374

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