Just Like Heaven Fest: The Hives, Interpol, M.I.A. and more thrill fans at Pasadena music festival

Hives’ singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist paused a few songs into the Swedish garage rockers set to acknowledge the time-traveling aspect of Just Like Heaven Fest in Pasadena on Saturday.

“Welcome to the greatest festival of 2005!” he announced to laughter from the crowd at the main stage on the Brookside Golf Course at the Rose Bowl. “I don’t remember it being this good, but it is now!”

Of course, the music always was and remains great. Not just the Hives, one of the great live rock and roll bands of their generation, but other performers Saturday from Interpol and Modest Mouse to M.I.A. and the Shins, Franz Ferdinand to Santigold and more.

But in the mid-aughts, most of these groups were still developing the fandoms that turned out to support them on Saturday. Many hadn’t made it to the biggest stages yet, and outside of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, there really weren’t many festivals booking these acts yet.

So yeah, Howlin’ Pelle had a point, made humorously like all of his between-song banter: We all were lucky to be here in 2022 for the stuff we loved, and still love, back then.

And, unlike Cruel World Fest, which brought beloved New Wave, punk and goth bands to the same festival grounds the previous weekend, Just Like Heaven’s music still feels fresh, less nostalgic, with nearly every act on Saturday referencing a new song here, an upcoming album there.

Here’s what we loved most at Just Like Heaven 2022:

Scandinavian rock

The Hives weren’t the only band on the bill from far in the north of Europe. The Danish indie rock duo the Raveonettes played earlier in the day, too.

Raveonettes  guitarist-singer Sune Rose Wagner and bassist-singer Sharin Foo play a much less frenetic style of rock than their Swedish neighbors the Hives – think Velvet Underground and Jesus and Mary Chain – it’s delivered with an equal dose of cool on songs such as “Noisy Summer” and “Love In A Trash Can.”

The Hives arrived on stage a few hours later dressed as always to the nines, black suits with white zig-zag patterns, musical notes, and lighting bolts appliqued to pants and jackets. Almqvist is a remarkably energetic frontman, roaming into the crowd to sing almost every other song, cracking up the crowd with his droll patter between numbers.

But the band’s music is no joke: The Hives are a ferocious live act, blazing through songs from the opener “Come On!” to the finale “Tick Tick Boom” with a tight musicianship that belies the usual definition of garage rock.

“This next song is a real classic,” Almqvist announced before the band played the breakthrough single “Hate To Say I Told You So.” “Like ‘The Idiot’ by Dostoevsky or ‘Top Gun.’ It’s classical music. It goes Brahms, Mozart, the Hives.”

Strong solo women

Peaches, the stage name of Canadian musician Merrill Nisker, arrived on stage as outrageously as anyone whose ever seen or heard her before would have expected, including a hat in the shape of a body part on her head.

At Just Like Heaven, she celebrated the 20th anniversary of her breakthrough album “The Teaches of Peaches,” a collection of songs that present a sex-positive, pro-feminist message through wild electropunk anthems. Highlights with titles we can actually print here include “Set It Off,” “AA XXX,” and “Rock Show.”

Where Peaches mixed punk into a synth-and-sampler formula, the singer-songwriter Santigold took sounds from sources such as New Wave and reggae and whipped them into something entirely her own.

“L.E.S. Artistes” opened her set with Santigold beaming happily, bookended between a pair of amazing dancers and backing vocalists. It, like “Go!” which followed, feature terrific sing-along melodies over often unexpected melodies. Other standouts included “Lights Out” and “Brooklyn Go Hard/Shove It.”

The British-born Sri Lankan Tamil rapper M.I.A. closed out the second stage on Saturday with a strong set of songs that mixed the personal with the political. Like many of the artists at Just Like Heaven, the festival was her first performance in years – 2018, in her case – and she seemed to be having a blast on stage with her backing dancers and the children’s choir that joined her at the end of her hour-long set.

Highlights included songs such as the irresistible rhythms of “Galang,” the love song “Jimmy,” which featured sounds inspired by the music of her family’s native land, and “Paper Planes,” the 2007 single that first brought her to wider attention.

Now for the gents

Interpol had the entire festival to itself for the final performance of the day, and despite its subtle post-punk vibe, the band enthralled the huge crowd that filled the field before them.

Singer Paul Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler are the two original members still in the band which formed in New York City at the end of the ’90s, and both sounded as strong as ever, their voices and guitars cutting through the shadowy stage lights to connect.

Songs such as “Evil” and “Obstacle 1” drew huge cheers from fans from their opening notes. The albums they’re from – “Antics” and “Turn On The Bright Lights,” respectively – made up the bulk of their set. Other highlights include “Rest My Chemistry” and “The New.”

Modest Mouse played the main stage before Interpol, opening with the “Dramamine” and its terrific guitar line. Singer-guitarist Isaac Brock sounded strong as he and the band played through songs from the 2021 album “Golden Casket” as well as older favorites such as “Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes” and, of course, “Float On.”

The Shins will return later this summer to play a delayed anniversary tour for their debut album, “Oh, Inverted World,” celebrating it with a 21st anniversary tour instead of the 20th due to the pandemic.

Singer-guitarist James Mercer, a normally reserved frontman, seemed giddy for him at being back on stage for the first time in nearly five years. Highlights of the Shins’ performance included “Simple Song,” which opened the set, “Saint Simon” and “Phantom Limb,” two of their loveliest melodies, and “New Slang,” the single from the debut album that might be the first Shins’ song you heard.

Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party thrilled fans of New Wave-inspired British indie rock with back-to-back performances.

Franz Ferdinand has more sing-along favorites – songs such as “The Dark of the Matinée,” which opened its performance to the rousing “Take Me Out,” played near the finish.

Bloc Party plays an edgier, more angular kind of post-punk. Singer Kele Okereke, who had earlier done a DJ set on the second stage, is an engaging front man and the band was tight on favorites such as “Day Drinking,” “Helicopter,” and “Ratchet.”

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