Despite some exasperating foibles, one can't accuse Neil Michael Hagerty of being unambitious. Earlier this year, the former Royal Trux monarch released All-Night Fox, the first CD credited to his new combo the Howling Hex. For their follow-up You Can't Beat Tomorrow, Hagerty and company have heedlessly raised the ante, combining a CD of new material with a DVD containing the "pilot episode" of the Howling Hex's new variety show. It all makes for a package as inexplicable as it sounds, but it might be the most consistently engaging music of Hagerty's post-Trux career.
You Can't Beat Tomorrow isn't Hagerty's first foray into the video arts. In 1992, he and Royal Trux-partner Jennifer Herrema made the paranoiac, drug-addled rockumentary What Is Royal Trux? wherein, among other things, the duo was pursued by Nixon-masked government agents. By that chaotic standard, the video presentation of You Can't Beat Tomorrow seems relatively subdued, featuring a vivid collage of newspaper clippings, stock footage, and crude animations alongside the Hex's staged musical performances. This pilot sports the type of dimly-lit, shot-on-VHS production one might identify with late-1980s cable access programming, which does give the proceedings a certain homely, DIY charm.
The DVD's longest non-musical segment is a rudimentary cartoon that follows the activities of what appears to be a monkey (the protagonist from Hagerty's 1997 novel Victory Chimp, perhaps?) and his friends working down at Henry's bar. Amusing though it is, if this diversion was intended to have some larger overriding point I'm afraid I missed it. Elsewhere, though, Hagerty does make a few clumsy attempts at satirical media commentary, such as on the short, nonsensical "making-of" documentary or the Howling Hex's 2003 TV commercial that the DVD includes as "extras." If the rest of this disc is intended as a broad media lampoon, however, it rings hollow and strangely anachronistic, as perhaps somebody should gently inform Hagerty that variety shows such as he's spoofing aren't really produced any more, if they ever were.
The Howling Hex fare considerably better on You Can't Beat Tomorrow's musical portion, although characteristically Hagerty's new material sounds almost totally unlike that on All-Night Fox. Hagerty is here backed by the Texas roots-rock outfit The Theater Fire, who augment these songs with banjo, accordion, fiddle and trumpet. As can be seen on the DVD, tracks like "Cobra Heart" feature as many as four guitarists, yet the album retains a tinny, sepia-toned veneer, as though all of the musicians were forced to perform gathered around a single vintage microphone. Nevertheless, songs like the atmospheric "No Numbers", or the instantly catchy title track are as appealing as any Hagerty's cut in years, with the expanded group's grainy tang landing somewhere between the Allman Brothers and The Basement Tapes. As with All-Night Fox, the highlights here are enough to suggest that perhaps Hagerty has turned yet another artistic corner, and to spur on the fading hope that at some point he'll again be able to squarely direct all his flighty ambitions into one decisive (and preferably musical) statement.
