E-Mail This Article to a Friend Swede emotion (continued)
	Related stories Author! Author! A strange case of the Hives. By Carly Carioli. I'll take Sweden: Division of Laura Lee and Sahara Hotnights follow TSOOL and the Hives. By Carly Carioli.

On Tyrannosaurus, though, several of the album’s best tunes return to the model the Hives debuted on 1997’s Barely Legal (Gearhead): the sound of a teenagers breaking into itchy Sonics-style garage rock at Minor Threat speed. Fully a third of Tyrannosaurus’s songs clock in at under two minutes, and hardly anything lingers longer than three. In less than 120 seconds, the leadoff "Abra Cadaver" sums up everything that’s great about the Hives: it’s as if they’d discovered a Situationist allegory about art and commerce buried under the cheap-thrills horror punk of the Misfits’ "Die Die My Darling." "I don’t need no alibi/Honestly, I tell a lie/They tried to stick a dead body inside of me," Pelle shouts while his brother Nick Arson rivets each line to the floor with a yowling call-and-response guitar lick. "Two Timing Touch and Broken Bones" also flies by in under two minutes, and its provenance is even older: the chord progression comes straight from "(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone," the hoariest of garage and punk standards. Drummer Chris Dangerous juggles a lurching, off-kilter rhythm while Arson and rhythm-guitarist Vigilante Carlstrom trade flanging outbursts that ricochet back and forth across the stereo field, until it sounds as if the whole band were bouncing off the walls. With garage bands, thievery is taken for granted: what you do with the spoils is what counts. Which may be why the issue of rock-and-roll authenticity is never far from Pelle’s mind: "So you look for authenticity/But I can’t see why it should bother me," he sneers over the wiry, Buzzcocks-like "No Pun Intended." His signature lark, the trope of attributing the band’s songwriting to some inscrutably veiled figure, is not an arbitrary prank. As so many of his lyrics attest, it’s part and parcel of an admission that all creation comes second-hand and shrouded in mystery, a declaration that all self-appointed originals are suspect.

The Hives hinted as early as the Veni Vidi–era instrumental "Hives Are Law, You Are Crime" that they were harboring a secret electro fetish, but Tyrannosaurus’s lead single, "Walk Idiot Walk," owes as much to the Who as it does to new wave. On "A Little More for Little You," they jump-start a ’50s teen-idol R&B homage with a few ticklish robotic twitches; "Love Is in the Plaster" adds a bit of clandestine synthesizer, and the closing surf-punk anthem "Antidote" could pass for a Pixies outtake. But these come off not as nostalgia but as a series of subtle insubordinations: Tyrannosaurus often sounds like a garage-punk answer to mutant dub, with guitars suddenly squelching into speaker-frying overdrive, or exploding into over-saturated reverb, or dropping out altogether. If the band’s jerky, stop-start pacing evokes a mechanized precision, the album’s production implies a machine testing its limits, speeding up and breaking down.

SAHARA HOTNIGHTS frontwoman Maria Andersson is as petulant and impetuous as Howlin’ Pelle is imperious. In her teens, Andersson developed a passing resemblance — auditory as well as physical — to Polly Jean Harvey, and she retains a shade of Harvey’s voluptuous, brooding alto. Unlike the Hives, most of Sweden’s rockboys pledge allegiance to Kiss and the MC5, and it’s this strain of Swedish rock that’s been the biggest influence on the Saharas. Their last album, Jennie Bomb (Jetset), paid tribute to the tough bad girls of the ’70s, dousing dirty licks gleaned from the Runaways and Girlschool in spritzy cruel-summer harmonies until they reeked of cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. On Kiss and Tell, the band have gussied up a bit, trading in grime for a hint of gloss. It’s the thing to do: with pop kids like Hilary and Lillix trafficking in louder guitars, and the harder-rocking Donnas in the studio with Avril Lavigne producer Butch Walker, there’s an ever-shrinking peninsula between the girls in the garage and polished pop fluff. But it’s a territory whose contours and back alleys the Saharas know well, and most of the album hovers, enjoyably, on the brink of primary-color new-wave fabulosity.

Kiss and Tell’s first single, "Hot Night Crash," sticks to a bouncy Ramones foundation, though it probably didn’t hurt the song’s early popularity on alterna-rock radio that its bridge echoes the burnt-transistor fuzz of the Strokes’ "Modern Age." "Walk on the Wire," one of the album’s most boisterous songs, finds Andersson channeling Iggy Pop over the same two chords from "Death Trip" — until a pillow fight erupts in the chorus. Their guitars have been given a sassy, ’80s makeover that helps moisten their rougher edges, and their Stooges-esque one-note piano solos have given way to retro synthesizers. They summon the jangling, overprocessed sheen of Pat Benatar’s "Love Is a Battlefield" (on "The Difference Between Love and Hell"), and also the weightless power pop of the Cars on "Stay/Stay Away" and the opening "Who Do You Dance For?", on which Andersson pulls off the impossible: a Ric Ocasek impression that sounds sexy. It’s not quite as slick a Cars impersonation as Fountains of Wayne’s "Stacy’s Mom," but if there’s an opening for Stacy’s older sister, they’re interested.

The Hives and Sahara Hotnights play this Friday, July 23, at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call (617) 262-2424. The Mooney Suzuki play the same night at Axis, 13 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call (617) 262-2437.