Pitchfork

How fast pop culture moves: The phrase "your new favorite band" might have described the then-up-and-coming Hives four years ago, when this catch-all collection was released by Poptones Records in the UK (complete with a "u" in "favourite"). At the time, it was perhaps the band's most audacious move: releasing a greatest hits comp before they even had a hit. In 2004, however, following a hit album, a vaguely defined garage-rock movement, and a Spider-Man soundtrack, The Hives are neither "new" nor arguably "favorite." In the intervening years, a seven-nation army of nostalgia-minded bands has amassed to exploit the hazy definition of "garage-rock," from The Vines and Jet to The Killers and Thee Shams. Unless this month's Tyrannosaurus Hives pulls some kind of amazing stunt-- and the first single, "Walk Idiot Walk", with its Who's Next guitar riff, suggests it just might-- Sweden's brashest and best-dressed pop/punks could fall victim to the harshest backlash this side of The Strokes.

However, as Your New Favorite Band still proves, The Hives could very easily erase all doubts. Officially released stateside in anticipation of T. Hives, Your New Favorite Band collects singles from Veni Vidi Vicious, Barely Legal, and the A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T EP, as well as a B-side from the "Hate to Say I Told You So" single and a DVD with three videos. Curiously, the collection is arranged in reverse chronological order, beginning with tracks from Veni Vidi Vicious: "Hate to Say I Told You So" still retains its churning momentum thanks to Chris Dangerous' perfectly concise guitar riff, and despite the polish, Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's vocals are still sandpaper rough. But, in this context at least, "Die, Alright!" sounds like the most urgent song they've yet recorded, its final chorus a true punk epic.

The downside of this arrangement is that it frontloads the collection with The Hives' best material, and gradually grows weaker as the disc progresses. Moving backwards, Your New Favorite Band next features five tracks from A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T. While "Outsmarted" and "Here We Go Again" overflow with swaggering audacity, tracks like "Mad Man" and the marble-mouthed rant "Untutored Youth" just sound shrill and overeager to impress. The two tracks from Barely Legal, "Automatic Schmuck" and "Hail Hail Spit n' Drool", are the weakest of the bunch, amplifying The Hives' most cartoonish tendencies.

What's missing from this collection is the glue between songs. Veni Vidi Vicious constructed a sovereign nation-state complete with its own nuclear arsenal, functioning economy, police force, and, um, metric system. Your New Favorite Band holds together through sheer entropy as it moves from its strongest to its weakest tracks. It's a strange trajectory, receding backwards in time even as it moves forward, yet it still manages to prove that despite their matching outfits and sights on new-favorite-band status, The Hives rise above their own shtick-- if sometimes just barely.