The Hives
Tyrannosaurus Hives
Interscope

In a 1966 interview with film critic turned director François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock discussed his use of what he dubbed the "McGuffin." According to Hitchcock, the McGuffin was nothing but a plot-enabling device that caught the viewer's attention, and served no further purpose. Much like the uranium in Notorious or the government secrets in North by Northwest, the Hives traffic in a similar kind of deception — the matching suits, the ridiculous names of the band members, those Colonel Sanders ties, and their manager/songwriter/svengali, the mysterious and never-present Randy Fitzsimmons who supposedly groomed them boy-band style.

This would at first seem to divert the attention away from the band's music, much the same way the brother-sister/husband-wife drama threatened to do for the White Stripes. For the moment, the Hives are too gifted as songwriters to be penned-in by semantics alone, and the band, though its catalog is fairly limited for a group that has been around for 11 years, squarely remains the center of attention, successfully redesigning Detroit rock and late-'70s punk for the post-R&B, post-pop, post-everything crowd. The Hives' second full-length finds the band working on a familiar sound — tight punk-pop songs with no shortage of melodic hooks and snarling vocals from frontman Howlin' Pete Almquist.

Tyrannosaurus Hives wastes no time starting off with the tommy-gun drumbeat of the cleverly titled "Abra Cadaver," in which Almquist neatly merges horror-show aesthetics with socialist politics. Over a fazed guitar, Howlin' Pete screams "They tried to stick a dead body inside of me... Honestly, I tell no lies... Wanted to stick an office worker inside of me." It would surely make Karl Marx proud. Or Gang of Four's John King, anyway.

The first single, "Walk Idiot Walk," highlights Tyrannosaurus Hives' emphasis on rhythm, eschewing the band's previous weightier work. The Hives substitute slashing guitars with a stripped-down groove, giving them more room to explore dynamics between instruments. Though "Walk Idiot Walk" lacks impact compared to the Hives' career-defining "Hate to Say I Told You So," its subtle R&B approach more than fills the gap. The band's R&B dalliances push the song and the band forward from simple slash 'n' burn to a cocky swagger. This bluesy sound is explored more fully on "Diabolic Scheme," the album's best track. Psycho-inspired strings collide with Almquist's primal shrieks and the robotic guitar strumming of Nicholaus Arson and Vigilante Carlstroem. Never one to shy away from self-important, self-satisfied preening, Almquist states his intent from the beginning, "Alive!/ Dead/ I was inside your head/ Had time well spent/ I got your mind well bent." All of which sounds like a malfunctioning jukebox simultaneously playing James Brown, the Buzzcocks, and the creepier work of Krzysztof Penderecki — if you can image an alternative universe where Penderecki is actually available on a jukebox.

Elsewhere, "Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones," "No Pun Intended," "See Through Head" and "B Is for Brutus" extend the stripped approach of "Walk Idiot Walk." The forcefulness and angry delivery of "See Through Head" is tempered by silly sounding "oh oh oh ohs" sung by what sounds like a quartet of newborn babies. "B Is for Brutus" sports a fuzzed-out guitar line that snakes its way through the song while the band furiously stomps along until the album's strong closer, "Antidote." Guitars answer one another in a punk version of dueling banjos as Almquist does his best Jagger impersonation over the mix.

As soon as Tyrannosaurus Hives begins, it ends. Clocking in at barely more than 30 minutes, the Hives boldly announce their plans to rock your world and then leave it just as quickly. Whether this can be interpreted as a lack of new ideas to inject into their sound is up for debate. Regardless, the Hives have put together an adrenaline rush of an album that firmly cements their status as one of rock's most exciting new acts. However, with their stubborn emphasis on theatrical posing, the Hives, at some point, will box themselves into a corner, conditioning themselves to perform the same old McGuffin. Whether the Hives realize it, the real show-stopper is in how well they rewrite the script, not in how closely they stick to it.

— Bobby Mann (mannhb at hotmail dot com)