Neil Hagerty has been doing a bang-up job of ensuring Royal Trux remain the one 1990s indie-rock institution that never reforms. He's reportedly turned down multiple reunion tour offers, opted out of participating in Drag City's recent Trux reissue campaign, and declared his utter disinterest in the prospect whenever the question pops up in interviews. His recent choice of homes-- New Mexico and, currently, Colorado-- keep him well insulated from music-industry machinations; Rather than stage, say, a Royal Trux comeback at an ATP festival, Hagerty would sooner play sparsely attended weekly residencies in Denver dives. All the while, he's been pushing his post-Trux outfit the Howling Hex further and further away from his previous band's bell-bottomed boogie, favouring a scrappy, norteño-spiced tack that, since the release of 2007's XI, has done away with drums altogether.
Given his strident don't-look-back ethos, it was something of a shock when, last December, Hagerty announced he would be performing Royal Trux's 1990 mind-fucking masterwork Twin Infinitives in its entirety at a New York City show, albeit with an unknown female vocalist filling the high-heeled cowboy boots of Hagerty's former foil and flame, Jennifer Herrema (currently of Black Bananas). This news was soon followed by the announcement of a new Howling Hex album that, for the first time in six years, would employ the services of a drummer. Taken together, these developments prompted speculative hints that Hagerty was more eager this time out to, if not outright retrace his Trux tracks, at least recapture some of his old band's mystique and muscle.
But listening to The Best of the Howling Hex, you're reminded not so much of Royal Trux's music as their second-most viewed YouTube video. In the infamous bootlegged clip, the band -- fresh off from signing an ill-fated deal with Virgin Records in 1995-- are being subjected to one of the least glamorous aspects of major-label patronage: having to record a soul-destroying succession of station IDs for generically named local music video shows. But a funny thing happens on the way to Alternavision: while Herrema's disdain for the process intensifies with each cigarette puff, Hagerty gets really into it, and becomes increasingly obsessed with getting each take just right, giving his partner instructions with the fussy impatience of a movie director running over-budget. You get the same sense listening to The Best of the Howling Hex: the album is maddeningly repetitive to the point of seeming like some cruel joke, but there's something admirable and charming about Hagerty's determination to make it work.
The most hilarious thing about The Best of the Howling Hex isn't the faux greatest hits title-- the album features all new material, natch-- but the fact that Hagerty recruited a new drummer only to have him play the exact same beats throughout the entire record, as if he were a human Casio preset. The album cover may list eight tracks, but there are really only two songs here: The slow ones play out like some bizarro reggae/polka/acid rock fusion scraped from Ween's old four-track; the fast ones keep double-time pace with cowpunk dust-ups of yore, like the Meat Puppets' "Lost" or the Minutemen's "Corona." Atop both are Hagerty's circular, repetitive melodies and his furious fretwork, which can dazzle in any context. But rather than provide points of distinction, his brain-scrambling, six-string swirls are consistently mixed so low as to be overshadowed by the chintzy, clipped, one-note rhythm guitar accents. "Variations on a theme" is an understatement for what transpires here; choruses mostly follow the same patterns as the verses, time changes are practically non-existent.
But the album's title starts to make a little more sense if you view The Best of the Howling Hex as an ongoing process through which Hagerty is trying to refine and perfect a particular song form. As wearing as it is to hear the same arrangements over and over again, the songs do get better and more engaging as the album chugs along: In this unwavering setting, the subtle, soothing synth line that buttresses the congenial melody of "The General Prologue" hits with all the splendour of a meteor shower, and heralds the album's most ebullient guitar hook; by the time we reach "Green Limousine", the Hex's default oompa-oompa gait has acquired a more frantic energy and, in the process, goads Hagerty into his most urgent and spirited vocal performance. And if the closing "Trashcan Bahamas" starts out like yet another trip to the bionic hee-haw, it suddenly detours into an ascendant, arpeggiated grand finale that sees Hagerty achieve his own version of "Beck's Bolero". But that sense of triumph is as much as ours as it is his-- a parting reward for those of us who manage to stay sane while the songs remain the same.
