The Hives' booming ego

How's this for international flavor: Swedish rock star Howlin' Pelle Almqvist called Minnesota last week from Guadalajara, Mexico, where his unflappable punk band had a day off after playing its second Mexican show ever.

"We're going to see if we can get into any kind of trouble tonight," the notoriously cocky Swede said, his accent mangling "Meh-he-co" with extra non-native flavor. "I'm sure it'll be easy enough."

The Hives certainly went to town when it came to making their fourth record, "The Black and White Album," which the quintet will promote with a Minneapolis gig next Thursday at First Avenue.

Hoping to branch out beyond their taut, retro garage-rock oomph, they enlisted a crew of producers to work on the album, including hip-hop stalwart Pharrell Williams and Modest Mouse cohort Dennis Herring. They bounced from Sweden to Los Angeles to, of all places, Oxford, Miss., to mix up the recording sessions. The results are interesting, but the best stuff is still the classic-sounding stuff, including the now omnipresent single "Tick Tick Boom."

With the clock ticking on his planned night of mayhem, here's what Almqvist had to say.

Q: You often say you're in the greatest band in the world. Are there ever any days you doubt it?

A: Yes, absolutely. Whenever we make a record, I doubt it all the time. There's always a lot to prove. But yeah, I think we're the greatest, but that's because I get to decide what kind of music we get to play [laughs]. I'm professionally very happy.

Q: You've been playing in this band for a decade now. Is it getting more or less fun?

A: It's different, but it's been consistently fun. I wouldn't call making records fun, but it's very satisfying. We get along much better now, which is nice. There's less fighting and hassles.

Q: "Tick Tick Boom" is all over American TV, from the Nike commercial to promos for shows like "Jericho" to sports broadcasts. Do you like hearing your music on TV?

A: It's been all right. The Nike commercial was kind of weird at first, seeing as we've turned down millions of commercials over the years. I like hearing our music in different places, but I can't listen to it. Hearing myself on the radio freaks me out a little bit. And if I'm in a club and they play the Hives, people start looking at me. That's the weirdest feeling. It's like you're naked and people are looking at you.

Q: One of the many places you guys recorded for this record was in Oxford, Miss. How did a Swedish punk band like yours fit in?

A: Ultimately, it was really cool. You know, the work ethic down there is a lot slower than it is in Sweden. Apart from that, the stuff we did there turned out really great. And the town of Oxford is a cool place. We were taller than everybody else. Also, the fact that we were walking around wearing outfits -- you feel out of place no matter where you are, but especially there.

Q: Wait. You guys actually wear your suits even in the studio?

A: Yeah, we're convinced it makes the record sound better. Or at least we always wear some form of black and white, because we don't play the same if we don't.

Q: Some people have discounted the band simply because of the matching outfits. They see it as a novelty. Have you considered losing the outfits?

A: No. We've been doing it a while and we've made a living playing music and been pretty damn popular for 10 years. I think we're past the novelty stage by now.

Q: When you come to Minnesota, where we have a lot of Swedish descendants, do you feel more at home than, say, in Oxford?

A: It's ridiculously cold there now, isn't it? I just heard it's like 30-below Celsius, and we're headed there.

Q: I'm sure it'll at least get below zero when you're here. Fahrenheit, that is.

A: I don't know what that means, below-zero Fahrenheit, but I'm sure it means it's really fucking cold there. But yeah, we have a lot of friends that have relatives there. A lot of times you can just tell by the way people look, they look Swedish, and some things about the accents there sound very Swedish. We get a kick out of that.

Q: We're also a big hockey state. You guys played the NHL All-Star Game last month, how was that?

A: I'm the least biggest hockey fan in the group, but I had fun. It was just such a bizarre spectacle. There were fireworks going off and dancing girls and all that sort of thing. Also, I saw Garth Brooks in the VIP booth. That was cool. I didn't get to meet him, though. What would I say to him?

Q: Speaking of unlikely hookups, how did a Swedish band get hooked up with Pharrell Williams?

A: He's been a fan of ours for a long time, and we like a lot of stuff he's done. He suggested a couple years ago that we should work together. When time came to do this record, we were a little bit bored with what we were doing, so we figured, why not go to him and see what comes of it?

Q: So you purposefully set out to experiment more with this album?

A: We just decided we weren't going to have a set plan for what the record's going to be. Usually, we have some kind of concept for the record. This time, we decided it was going to be all over the place.

Q: What was the end result of working with so many different producers?

A: What I realized this time is it really comes down to how the band's playing and the songs we're playing. Not to discount the producers, but a producer can only do so much -- make a guitar sound heavier, or the drums sound heavier, and so on. But it's still the same song you rehearsed in the rehearsal space, most of the time. We had so many songs this time, we let a friend make a sequence of the record for us, and then we just used that, because we couldn't agree. A lot of other songs we recorded didn't make the record, but were still great.

Q: A lot of people wanted to see you last fall when you toured with Maroon 5, but they hated that band too much to go. Would you fault them for that?

A: Well, they didn't have to sit through Maroon 5, because we played before them. But that was the reason why we chose to play a lot of our own shows on that tour, anytime we had a day off. It had been such a long time since we played in America, it felt weird that the only way people were going to see us was to pay more money and only see half the show. I understand that. But also, not every Maroon 5 fan is a Hives fan, either. Fair enough.

Q: When you're performing in Sweden, do you still sing in English all the time?

A: Yeah, we perform all our songs the same. There's a long tradition of Swedish bands singing in English. For us, at least, we figured our music was a bit too bizarre or too particular to appeal to enough people in Sweden for us to make a living only playing music there. Plus, we just like the way English sounds in rock 'n' roll music.

Q: The Raconteurs recruited you to provide the footstep sounds for the song "Footsteps" on their new record. So, are you a killer foot-stepper, too?

A: Absolutely. I was just hanging out with them in the studio, and they wanted me to be on the record, so I stomped my feet. So I know at least one thing on the record is going to be great: the foot-stomping. Actually, the whole record sounded really good.

Q: A lot of people love your cockiness onstage, and a lot of people hate it. Have you ever gotten your ass kicked, or threatened to be kicked, because of it?

A: Oh yeah, it used to happen all the time. Now, I think, people know what to expect. But we used to get in fights all the time over that, and we would never compromise our show because of it. There have been bottles thrown. Or we used to play short sets, and a lot of fans would get into fights with us because we didn't play long enough. But whatever. At least that usually meant they wanted more.

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