The Hives

On tour with pop singer Pink, who explicitly picked the guys to open up for her on her arena tour, The Hives are playing a few club dates on their days off. It’s fitting that Cleveland is one of those dates; the guys are big fans of Ohio’s rock and punk past. Often lumped in with the Strokes and White Stripes as part of the turn-of-century garage rock revival, the Hives issued Lex Hives, a fine return to form, last year. “I think our last album was more experimental,” says singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist. “There was some hip-hop and a lot of playing piano instead of guitars. We wanted to make this album not that and go the opposite direction. We wanted to make a simple rock ’n’ roll album. Most of our favorite rock n’ roll albums are when everybody sang at the same time in the studio. We wanted it to be a live rock’ n’ roll album and that’s what it is.” (Jeff Niesel)