The Hives' booming ego

How's this for international flavor: Swedish rock star Howlin' Pelle Almqvist called to Minnesota two weeks ago from Guadalajara, Mexico, where his unflappable punk band had a day off after playing only 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-hee-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 Thursday at First Avenue.

Hoping to branch out beyond their taut, retro garage-rock oomph, they enlisted a crew of different producers for 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 rockers, 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. I think most bands that have been around a while consider themselves in their top 5 at least.

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. Other than that, though, playing the music is as fun as it's always been.

Q "Tick Tick Boom" is all over American TV, from a Nike commercial to promos for shows like "Jericho" to sports broadcasts. Other than the fact that you get paid good money for that, do you like hearing your music on TV?

A A lot of things about this record has been us trying things we wouldn't normally do, in order to give it a try and evaluate if we want to do it again. Usually, we've been very wary of letting people use our music for anything, but this time we figured we'd put "Tick Tick Boom" in as many places as we can and see what happens.

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 fit in?

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 With you guys and the White Stripes, some people have discounted the band simply because of the matching outfits. They see it as a novelty. Have you ever 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're touring America and come to a state like Minnesota, where we have a lot of Swedish descendents, do you feel more at home than, say, a place like Oxford?

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 [expletive] cold there.

But yeah, we have a lot of friends that have relatives there and other parts of America. 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 town. 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?

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.

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, any time 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 is a Hives fan, either. Fair enough.

Q This is something I've often wondered with [Germany's] the Scorpions, too: 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 make a living only playing music here. Plus, we just like the way English sounds in rock 'n' roll music. We didn't grow up listening to Swedish rock 'n' roll. We grew up with American rock 'n' roll.

Q I understand 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?

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 that?

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 compromised our show because of it. There have been bottles thrown. Or we used to play short sets, and a lot of rock fans would get into fights with us because we didn't play long enough. But whatever. At least that usually meant they wanted more.