You know the drill by now. Foreign (preferably Scandinavian) band, practical legends back home (or so we’re told and are wont to believe), an arm-full of albums to their name, precision rock ‘n’ roll butts and cheekbones, sounds to match the curves, coordinated clobber, the lot, bagged up and rolled out as an instant freeze-dried ornament-ready quirk-laden pop group for the UK. We have it so good, no? Well y’know, sometimes we do, yes. For your lazier moments of musical discovery. So looking a bit like The Hives on the cover, compiling a retrospective omnibus of choice career chunks, passing it off as a regular debut album and making like they invented the genre are all taken care of here in slick effect.
But delve past all the rapidly growing clichés – a natural by-product of any more than 2 people doing something similar – and there really is something digestible, even through the most cynical palette. Something a bit special even. The Hives were a bit special, fabulous exuberant showmen too, lest you forget. For about 16 minutes. Then the joke drooped, went a little stale and you hastily scanned the room for someone else to make eye-contact with. Caesars, in spite of squaring up to a number of the same expectations, are not a joke. And they have more than one string on their figurative guitar too.
There’s the expected jabba-jabba-hey pummelling of ‘Sort It Out’ (their own crack – arf – at ‘Feel Good Hit Of the Summer’ – “I wanna sniff glue, cos I can’t get over you”), then there’s Inspirals-esque Hammond bundled in during ‘Kick You Out’ and ace single ‘Jerk It Out’ (can you see a pattern forming here), and then drops to mid-pace Rolling Stonesy ballad ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ that tinkers along like it’s nabbed The Cardigans’ back-line. It’s basically great innocent 60s pop with the volume distorting and the novelties kept largely locked up. Only we appear to be missing a minute somewhere, the album clocking in at 38 minutes and 5 seconds? We can only presume you should leave yourself to stand for that long afterwards.