The Hives @ Brooklyn Steel - Brooklyn

October 30th, 2023: The Hives, Olivia Jean  @ Brooklyn Steel - Brooklyn, NY

The Hives - Photos Courtesy of: Edwina Hay

The Hives blessed fans with another dozen new songs on The Death of Randy Fitzimmons back on August 11th and kicked off their tour with a sold-out show at Brooklyn Steel in Brooklyn, NY the eve before Halloween (Monday, October 30, 2023). Who is Randy Fitzsimmons? He may or may not exist, but has been credited as discovering and managing The Hives as well as being an unofficial sixth member of the band. With their first new record in over a decade, Fitzsimmons is now dead…or perhaps he is still alive?

The long-running garage rock band recently announced on social media that there would be prizes awarded for costumes for their Brooklyn show plus Washington, D.C. on Halloween. Naturally, there were people dressed up like The Hives, including one person up front who referenced frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist accidentally hitting himself in the face with a microphone during their performance at a festival.

Another garage rock act, Olivia Jean, and her band were selected to open the tour. The four members took the stage promptly at 8 PM and played a solid and fun set for 40 minutes. Olivia Jean and her band seemed truly excited to be on tour with The Hives and engaging with their fans at the tour opening show.

The Hives came on stage about 9:15 PM after Frédéric Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre” played over the speakers and frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist jokingly and accurately declaring, “It is good to have us back!” before the group kicked off their set with the first track of Randy Fitzsimmons, “Bogus Operandi,” and subsequently launching into “Main Offender,” “Walk Idiot Walk,” and “Rigor Mortis Radio.” Almqvist announced that the new album made him feel like a proud parent before the band performed the fifth song from the aforementioned record, “Stick Up.” 

All evening, Pelle’s banter was witty and sharp: “I looked at the setlist and you people love this song. You’ve loved it for 20 years!” before he introduced guitarist (and his brother) Nicholas Arson to begin “Hate To Say I Told You So,” from their 2000 sophomore album Veni, Vidi Vicious. “Yeah, we’ve been practicing!” he later noted when expressing how good they sounded. When he announced the last song of their set, people loudly expressed their disappointment and he immediately quipped, “Do we have a customer complaint?” The Hives selected “Countdown to Shutdown,” another single from the new album, as the final song of their set before they left the stage, only to return to us a few moments later. We received a two-song encore of “Come On!” (from 2012’s Lex Hives) and “Tick Tick Boom,” (from The Black and White Album). Before the Swedish gents sent us off into the night, we heard Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better” over the house speakers as the band took a bow to a cheering audience.

I caught my first performance from the Swedish quintet back in 2001 and saw them a few months ago in May at a smaller venue. I can always count on The Hives to deliver an energetic and fun performance and I’m so grateful I got to see them twice in a year after a long hiatus. They’re scheduled to return to NYC again in 2024 to open for Foo Fighters at CitiField and I’m very glad I got to see them in a medium-sized venue before they bring The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons to the home of The New York Mets.

Olivia Jean