Didn't the U.S. government recently pass a financial-institution-authored bankruptcy thingamajig to make it more difficult for people to abuse credit lines? Why isn't Neil Michael Hagerty skeert? No, this review will not mention his four other past and present bands, because to do so would only encourage him, and at the risk of sounding ungroovy, what he needs right now is a corpulent high school guidance counselor whose breast pockets are stocked with pamphlets about "motivational horizons." Which is not to slander Hagerty's energy as an author, video artist, and musician-- even the least guitar-smitten Pitchfork typist could assemble an anthology of selections from his works that would earn a 9.5 or higher. Problem is, that'd be like spending a day looking for a Fiero bumper in the acreage of an infuriatingly uncomputerized junkyard while the proprietor muttered in his sleep over abrasive loudspeakers.
1-2-3 at least has an excuse for its incoherence; it's a sometimes edited, blended, remixed, retitled, and re-ordered repackaging of three (ahem) vinyl-only Hex products from 2003 and 2004, and yes, it plays like three EPs on shuffle. Roughly one-third offers great Midwestern psych voiced by NMH, with his John Fogerty-trying-to exorcise-Roky Erickson yawp that seems both studied and natural. These songs contain chuggy solos and lyrics that are either fascinatingly free-associative and wordplayful or that construct and then abandon narratives or scenes, similar to the prose on Hagerty's if-McSweeneys-was-run-by-Graham Greene blog. 1-2-3's second mode features his sidekick, whom I'll call Strepp Throat because of the pleasantly almost-impassioned femaleness and the conspiratorial anonymity. The backing tracks on these tunes sound invariably like sloppy demos of a bored experimentalist angry that his interior genius slums afternoons in Versechorusverseburg. The album's third flavor consists of its noise collages-- note that I did not say noise sculptures. Some of these are a real trip! You will never want to hear some of them again!
Yeah, so, this thing kind of just has to be sweated out. By the bongteenth track, its fealty-to-nothing aesthetic inspires both devotion and rage. Hagerty's a ye-olde-traditionalist cooking up an American style goulash that happens to reek of Bookforum and conservatory chops, which can be awesome, but if you can't just relax about it, you'll collapse from thesis-fatigue trying to discern grand purpose in his high-minded low-balling. A fine, finished-sounding piece such as "Imaginary Saints" becomes a sort of tragic tease, like a beautiful foot hanging out of a basin of Country Crock.
