Good. It's getting really nice and warm, it's spring turning into summer here, so people are really excited, especially because, you know, the Covid thing. Things are opening up here a little more, especially where we live, in Massachusetts, and so there's these two things: spring and also people wanting to get out. So, people are excited. 

Well, the formula was the same, you know? J. does demos, really stripped down demos, with just drums and guitar. Sometimes he'll kind of hum along some lyric ideas and then give those to me and Lou. That was the same. What changed is the pandemic completely affected the record, because the drums are done first, and it usually takes about two months to get all the tracks together. Sometimes we keep some of the loose bass tracks, but he usually overdubs, and then, of course, the guitar and vocals come next. The timing was so perfect, because, literally, when I finished all the drum tracks, everything closed down and we weren't together. I didn't see those guys for months and months and months, so J. had to finish the record basically by himself, at home, in his studio. So I'm really amazed that he pulled it off, that it sounds cool, because usually we have an engineer and a producer. I mean, we still had the producer and we had some people working remotely, but it's a totally different thing when you're just by yourself. 

The studio is in J.’s house, yeah. It's on the third story of his house. That's how he is, now that he has a studio, he doesn't ever wanna...  We're always asking, like, ‘oh, maybe we should go to LA, maybe we should go, you know…’ Like, one time we were talking with Dave Grohl. He’s got his amazing studio in California, and he was joking, ‘yeah, you guys should come out and do a record’, and we got really excited. Like, me and Lou, we were like, yeah! But then J. says it will cost too much, I'd rather just do it at my house, it's cheaper.... [laughs]

Well, we had worked with him before. When Kurt started out, he supported us for a bunch of shows, and he started getting bigger and bigger... It's that old story, he got kind of bigger than us, and started doing his own stuff. For some reason, we just wanted a change. Maybe to inject a little new life, make things a little fresher. And we just thought it would be good to have Kurt to kind of produce and sit in for some stuff. And then, you know, that was cut short. He came in for, maybe, three different days, and then the pandemic started and we all had to go our separate ways. But he did have some input. I think we're such a private band, so I think for us, just having someone like Kurt just sitting there, even if he's not doing much, just his presence is such a big deal. Just to have someone else in the studio with us when we're doing that, just made enough of a difference that, I think,  it was a positive thing and it made it kind of lighter and poppier.

I've said this in every interview, and I'll keep saying it, because it's really the right answer. That's just how J. views songwriting and each record. He has said this in interviews, that for him, the album is a snapshot. It's like a big photo album and each record is a page and he just kind of writes whatever's going on at that time of his life. And I think that's why it seems fresh, because he's not thinking of the past or the future. He's just thinking about what's been going on the last few months of his life and then he'll draw upon that stuff. We'll also take older songs, like a B-side, that didn't really work, and we'll rework them. We'll put one part from one song to another part, and create a new song, and then we'll be like, ‘oh, that sounds pretty good’. There's a little of that, but I think the main thing is J. just kind of looks at what's going on. He's not really thinking about the history or, ‘oh, does this song sound too much like this other song?’. He just kind of writes in the moment, and I think that's why there's a certain freshness to the room. 

I like the first track, “I Ain't”. It's starting to sound really good live. There's a couple, I mean, I'm still listening to the record, actually. We're still kind of learning the record, because, you have to understand that when Lou... We're kind of an odd band, because when we record the drums and bass, Lou and I have not heard the songs. J.'s not singing, he's not playing guitar, all we're listening to are drums and bass, without any guitar, no vocals... So we don't really know what the songs are going to sound like, till we literally hear the record when it's done, and we're like, ‘oh yeah, so this is how it sounds’. It's kind of a bizarre process, we kind of have to learn them when we hear the finished product, and then we have to revisit that and go, ‘oh, okay, so this is how it's really supposed to sound’. Today we rehearsed and our tour manager came by and he had a box of CDs, and I grabbed three, so I'm just getting it now. 

Well, the weirdest thing is when you hear actors when they’re asked, ‘what did you think of your last movie?’, and they're, like, ‘oh, I don't watch my movies. I do my scenes and leave’. [laughs] And they're like, ‘oh, god, I would never watch my movies’. And I thought that was so wild when I heard that.

No, it's weird... This is the weird thing. We're all back in the same area, but I think we spent more time together, and I definitely spent way more time with Lou when he lived in California. On the other side, now I never see him. He's always just with his family, because he's remarried, and he got his new set up here in Massachusetts, and he's always just doing family stuff. Before, he was always like, ‘oh, yeah, come on over’. There was always stuff going on, and now it's totally different, so I actually never see Lou, unless we're either rehearsing or going on tour. And it's so bizarre. I thought we would be like jamming more and hanging out, and I thought ‘oh, this will be great, maybe we'll come up with all these ideas’, and it turns out it's just the opposite. [laughs] 

Not really. It doesn't really affect us. I mean, we're still really old school. I mean, J. and Lou listen to a ton of records. J. still mainly prefers records. I think that if you had asked me that question years ago, when things were kind of making a shift, I probably would have been more like, ‘I don't like it, what's going on’, you know? But now it's, like, you get used to it. It's not really, to me, that much different. I was really sad to see vinyl go, I really enjoyed records, but I'm not one of those people who's, like, I've made the shift to digital and CDs, and I don't really think about it. I have a very small record collection that I still keep around, but I'm not a big vinyl person anymore. So, again, I just kind of go with the new way. I think we all have, we've just kind of done the shift and we don't really think about it.

I mean, I think we're excited, as a band. Personally, I’m a little apprehensive. I would rather see the virus gone and the whole world totally vaccinated before we go back on tour, but it seems like it'll be okay. It's exciting to think about it, I just hope it's safe. It's hard because you have to understand, in our country, there's such a divide. It's so crazy how there's just so many people into kooky conspiracy theories and all this stuff, and it doesn't give you confidence to want to go out and do stuff. When there's all this kind of crazy imbalance going on, for me personally, I'd rather wait until things are a little more settled. But I understand people are really anxious and really want to get back to music. Not just us, I mean, there's already a ton of bands advertising doing all kinds of stuff, so...

I think you're referring to the one J's brother-in-law did. I've seen a lot of it and I thought it was really good. It was many years in the making, like 10 years or something.

I've played with The Lemonheads and Dinosaur Jr. there a bunch of times. It's always exciting. I mean, Brazil it's just always really fun and super exciting. There's no specifics about the shows, it's more just the energy. You get the energy of each country, it kind of leaves an imprint on you. I think a lot of the South American countries, they're just more fun to play gigs. It's just more loose, it's not as uptight. It's more festive and fun. I think that's the main difference.

Ao longo de 2020, publiquei algumas resenhas de quadrinhos no Scream & Yell. Neste post, reuni os links para cada uma delas para facilitar o acesso aos leitores. Acompanhe!

Em “Aprendendo a Cair”, realidade e fantasia alimentam a narrativa em uma história dedicada às pessoas com deficiência. Adaptação do conto “Traje de Rigor”, de Marcos Rey, chega ao mercado em formato digital com arte de Gustavo Lambreta. Adrian Tomine diverte ao relembrar conquistas e humilhações no mundo das HQs em "A Solidão de um Quadrinho Sem Fim". Leia as resenhas aqui.

John Constantine tenta sobreviver à era do cancelamento em novas histórias de “Hellblazer”. Em uma edição com oito histórias (que ainda inclui a participação de JC em um conto de “Os Livros da Magia”, relacionado à trama principal), o autor Simon Spurrier e os artistas que levaram suas ideias para o papel — Aaron Campbell, Matías Bergara e o brasileiro Marcio Takara — trazem o detetive do oculto para 2019, em meio a uma Inglaterra enfiada no Brexit e a um mundo onde os cigarros eletrônicos e as cervejas de “lúpulo colhido de forma ética” são a regra. Leia o texto completo aqui.

I’m good, rehearsing for the shows. During the whole pandemic, let’s say, we did it less. Less of everything. Just a downtime, really. But lately we have been working on new material and rehearsing for this shows...

 
So, The Hives' (and the world's) First World Wide Web World Tour... How did you come up with this idea and what are your expectations for this event?

Well, we miss it too much, playing live. It’s on our DNA, so we just miss playing live. And we wanted to do something that was as close as a live show as possible. And this means playing in the same time that we would have in another country, and have crowd participation. So, with this, they can send voice messages, call in… So, that will be a bit weird, but also, that kind of happens on a normal show. Often Pelle talks to people and stuff and helps the show move forward a little bit. So the idea came from trying to do something as close as a live show as possible.

Most of our roadies have different jobs as well. So, we talked to them and made sure they were doing OK. But we did one show and one live stream in about a year and a half now. So, the best part of it is that it was so much fun to see each other again, you know? I mean, the crew and the people that we work with. That was so much fun, so yeah. I’m really looking forward to that. And also, we want to do shows back to back as well. You wanna be tired, you wanna have that in your system. It’s what it’s supposed to be. 

I’m not sure I can tell you that [laughs]. It will be a safe, underground, sealed, pandemic-safe bunker. But in order for us not to have millions of people travelling there, we can’t reveal it. It’s not our usual studio or rehearsal space, it’s a place designed specifically for doing the First World Wide Web World Tour.

It will be different. It will be as much as a real concert as possible, but we’ve seen some examples where you put everything up as you would in a normal concert, and it doesn’t look really good when you film it. So, we took some inspiration from filmed performances and videos in order to do it. 

We’ve been rehearsing the songs as if it were a usual concert. Of course, we will have these segments where we will have to, you know, have some audience participation in there, so we’ll have to figure that out. I mean, we didn’t rehearse with someone calling in. We should have though.

Hopefully that’s going to be better. And also, it will be more like a tour, where we play in different timezones, so we’ll have sleep deprivation as a usual tour… So with that, we hope to achieve something that hasn’t already been done before.  

I mean, who doesn’t want to play São Paulo, to begin with? That’s the reason [laughs]. We’ve had great shows in São Paulo and in other parts of Brazil as well. We definitely wanted to have a South America show, and we’ve had great shows there in Argentina, Mexico, Peru. So, we wanted to stop by.

Ehh… I mean, if you wanna see the greatest rock show on Earth, then buy a ticket. It’s as simple as that. I don’t wanna get into people’s economy. If you feel like you can’t afford it, and instead you wanna buy food, then you should do that. Food will be better than a Hives’ show. I mean, it will be equally great. I can’t put pressure on people to buy a ticket, but it will be a great show.

Like I said, we put out this effort to have the callers, the crowd noise from recorded shows from where we have previously played. With that, hopefully - and I say that because we haven’t played the first one yet - that will give both to us and the crowd the feeling of a usual concert. 

Yeah, there’ll be new tunes. People can vote for your favourite songs, and also new songs that maybe they haven’t heard before.

Yeah, definitely. If this turns out well and we don’t lose all ur money doing it and the pandemic keeps dragging on, then definitely we’ll be looking into doing more shows. It’s already fun and we haven’t even played yet.

I didn't know that. I mean, I probably heard about it, but The Hives have always been making records. Right now we’re working on two records. We have two pretty much done, ready to rehearse and record. And then we’re working on a third record as well simultaneously. For us it’s always been about making records, we want to release our music as records. But if we get together with the record and company and they tell us, ‘well, everything will be so much better if you just release a song at a time’, maybe we’ll do that. And if we release one song a month from now on, I think we can go on for about four years almost. We have a lot of material.  

We have the whole summer booked for festivals. But if this tour goes well, we might do more virtual shows if the summer and fall dates don’t happen. We have an European tour planned for the summer already booked, with the European festivals booked as well. So, if we’re allowed to do that, we’ll do it. That’s wishful thinking, perhaps, but that’s where we wanna go. 

Yeah, it will be great seeing you guys again. It’s been way too long since we saw some São Paulo faces. Tune in and let’s make this thing explode together.