THE BLACK AND WHITE ALBUM
The Black and White Album is the fourth full-length album by Swedish rock band The Hives. The Hives recorded 20 to 30 songs (including seven recorded with super producers The Neptunes) for this album from which they finally chose the best. Other tracks were produced by Jacknife Lee and Dennis Herring. Sessions were held with Timbaland, with whom the band produced the song “Throw It On Me”, but took place too late for any of the resulting tracks to be on the album. They hoped to use these songs as B-sides. (More from Wikipedia)
Two other bands came along at about the same time with songs on MTV that I really liked; they even had similar names: the Vines and the Hives. At the annual MTV Music Video Awards telecast in 2002, the two bands had back-to-back performances that were simply wonderful. As it turned out, it was just the one song on the Vines album, Highly Evolved that really had that garage-rock style, but the Hives kept releasing one great album after another. Also, their live shows have been rated by Spin magazine as the 8th greatest ever. The Black and White Album above is the only one by the Hives that I actually own, but I am sure looking hard for others.
(January 2013)
