Not based on the musical of the same name from Jonathan Larson. It’s Scuzz Sunday!

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Good Morning to you! It’s Jacob Braybrooke here, and it’s time to revisit one of the Pop-Punk anthems of the past for ‘Scuzz Sunday’, not forgetting that it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! ‘Tick Tick Boom’ marks the, very explosive, second appearance on the site from The Hives. The sharp suited Swedish Garage Rock 5-piece revivalists from the mid-2000’s have built a reputation for themselves as one of the best live Rock acts, according to music critics, and they made a claim to that fame with the release of their 2005 live DVD, ‘Trussels In Brussels’. ‘Tick Tick Boom’ was the opening track and lead single for 2007’s ‘The Black And White Album’, and the track was voted in at #99 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of 2007. It also reached #41 on the UK Singles Chart, and has been used as the theme track for WWE’s ‘Survivor Series’ pay-per-view event in 2007. You may have also heard it from the movies ‘Jumper’ and ‘The Nut Job 2’, along with several video games including ‘LEGO Rock Band’ and ‘Dirt 4’. As a side note, my mother is celebrating her 48th birthday today, and she reads the blog every single day as well as liking the Facebook posts, so a very special shout-out goes to her today. If you wish to leave a comment to wish her a lovely day as well, I don’t mind one bit. But, for the moment being, let’s get back to the task at hand. Set your detonator to ‘Tick Tick Boom’ below.

A fun fact for you is that two different music videos for ‘Tick Tick Boom’ used to circulate Scuzz and Kerrang, including the museum-themed, surrealist take on the track that you have just seen above my text, however, there’s an alternative video which is a staged, choreographed live performance of the track from The Hives, part of which was displayed in a Nike/Finish Line commercial. As for the track itself, the popular quintet aim for the charts for a fun Pop-Punk tune built on frenetic guitar riffs and neat Drum riffs, with recognizable lyrics like “I was alright/You come taggin’ along” and “I was right all along” that don’t seem to make much of an impression in terms of having any significant meaning, but it sounds catchy and rhythmic. The chorus is notable for the sound effects of a literal bomb explosion, which was the call of the producer – Dennis Herring – to be included on the track, and so it’s obvious that he wanted to really go to town on the general namesake of the single nearer to the time that it was being written. The chorus adds punchy hooks like “I got my eye on the score/I’m gonna cut to the core” and “It’s too late/It’s too soon” that all have a fairly loud delivery, while the tight, breakneck Bass guitar chords and the light Sonic modifications of the vocals were based on the same formula that had carried them a fair distance towards commercial success in their career’s peak time. Although fairly unimpressive, this was a fine effort. The sound effects would probably come across as cheesy to some, and these lyrics said nothing to me, but I felt the speedy Garage-Rock beats, the subtle electronic blips and the enthusiastic vocal performance added up to a decent level of engagement with the sound, for me. I could definitely picture this one being some good fun on a packed festival floor, although it’s difficult to argue the core ingredients of the sound are very typical for The Hives and didn’t reinvent the wheel at all. Still, it’s a fun track that, in some ways, went down like a bomb going off.

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If you’re still wondering whether The Hives have been a part of a feature on the blog before, then I ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’. Give that previous post a look-in here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2020/03/08/scuzz-sundays-the-hives-hate-to-say-i-told-you-so/

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That brings us to the end of the road for today, and here’s to another year of happy existence for my mother. Thank you for your continued support in making it this far, and please feel free to join me again tomorrow for the start of another week of new music recommendations. Coming up tomorrow, we will be looking at a Parisian electronic dance music producer who has enlisted the help of Bakar, Mac DeMarco and Juan Wauters for his debut album, which is out now on Ed Banger Records and Because Music. He was one of four members from the Electronica group Club Cheval.