Speaking of things that come out at night:

Pigchopper put this together. He wrote the tune, played the bass, programmed the drums, played the spiky leads and some whooshy guitars, and I played two acoustic guitars, two electric guitars, hand percussion and “singing”. Then Pig-C made the video.

It is worth mentioning that Pigchopper is in New Hampshire and I am in Los Angeles.

Special thanks to Max Schreck.

I see that one of my favorite bands, The Howling Hex, has got a new album coming out… It’s called “Earth Junk.” In their honor, therefore, I will now repost my reviews of two of their previous releases, starting with the older of the two.

Good luck and dig it,

5

The Howling Hex - Nightclub Version Of The Eternal
Drag City Records, 2006

Neil Michael Hagerty - baritone guitar, voice
Mike Saenz - electric guitar, voice
Lyn Madison - percussion, voice
Dan Sylvester - additional percussion

Note: Neil Michael Hagerty has described Howling Hex as being as much or more of a production company than a band, with shifting personnel from project to project, and incorporating visual media like the DVD that accompanied You Can’t Beat Tomorrow (Drag City, 2005), articles of clothing hung on easels, and whatever else he/they feel like doing. Hagerty is also a published writer of fiction, essays, liner notes, blogness and etc and his lyrics are always worthy of examination on various levels. It is also worth letting them wash over you without conscious dissection.

…Starts with a percussion interlude that might have been sped up from a Black Crowes’ record, diverse tones and deep rhythms where one might be looking for or at least expecting nasal guitars and tough, rootsy rocknroll… But all of that will follow soon enough. Staccato vocals in rough unison and groups of three lines of enigmatic lyric and then a remarkably listenable guitar solo, presumably improvised in large part, that moves from ambiguous theme to ambiguous theme, out-of-phase pseudo-snarkiness and fingerpicked melodics that could be lifted from Abbey Road but you can hear them better here. This song is called “Hammer And Bluebird.” It is just over seven minutes long. A loping bassline runs through it, recalling the The Magic Band, Mirror Man edition, with a less manic constitution and no Vliet. “Hammer And Bluebird on the radio, bluebird and hammer on the radio…”

The basic approach on Nightclub Version Of The Eternal recalls more than anything Howling Hex’s earlier compact disc All Night Fox (Drag City, 2004), where long rocknroll grooves put you in a dance trance under loopy harmolodic arrangements of guitar improvisations and odd vocal chants and melodies. The main difference between the two is that this one doesn’t wear my ears out. Hagerty has a tendency to play his guitar - which is missing it’s highest string and thus has a firm mid-range tone to it already, in fact he’s credited with baritone guitar on this compact disc (in fact, I understand he is playing the basslines) - with a thumbpick and a wide-open wah, thus creating a mid-range so brutal that even his clean tone at low volume will do to your brain something akin to Don Cherry and his Pakistinian pocket trumpet (thank you Harlan Ellison, who had to pick half his brain up off the floor).

But Nightclub Version Of The Eternal presents a clean, clear mix that is much less tiring to the ears and brain. This is the only aspect in which the excellent Nightclub Version Of The Eternal is, or anything could be, a superior record to All Night Fox.

(How about that title, by the way: Nightclub Version Of The Eternal… Bar band transcendence? Or what? They deliver it live, I will tell you that.)

The approach is consistent throughout: unbreakable grooves, propulsive rhythms, kaledioscopically shifting guitar tones from clean to phase-shifted to out-of-phase to wah to fuzz, sometimes changing radically after every few notes. You can dance to this, sing along with it, stone to it, sleep to it. Everything Hagerty’s done (that I’ve heard) has made me happy, but this is a real high point. The band is strong, relaxed and comfortable, and the material is as on-it as anything needs to be.

The All Night Fox touring band - which was slightly different from the recorded version, which was completely different from the band on You Can’t Beat Tomorrow, both of which were at least somewhat different from the  band on Nightclub Version Of The Eternal - was AMAZING, one of the most mind-melting boogie experiences I’ve ever experienced. Throughout the night, Hagerty would pause in his playing to turn his sheet music (the All Night Fox album was fairly involved lyrically and I’m guessing he was reading the lyrics, as was his backup poet) and hang a new multi-colored sheet or art piece of some kind over a rack that hung behind him, often changing an article of his clothing as well, before leading the band without pause into the next song or series of grooves…

Which goes by way of saying, I sure hope this version of the band or something approximating it makes it up here to Seattle (these days that would be: Down Here To Los Angeles)! I’ll come see it, and I’ll bring my friends.

Howling Hex XI
The Howling Hex, Drag City, 2007

I’m going to do for this record what I never did (but should have done) with Pound For Pound: I’m going to play it a lot. Right now I’m going to play it for the second time in an hour, and never mind that the vibrations from typing are making the speakers cut in and out.

The record I am listening to is called Howling Hex XI, and it is the somethingth record by Neil Hagerty’s current band, The Howling Hex. Somethingth because there are a lot of them, and because it is sometimes hard to distinguish The Howling Hex’s “official” releases from limited editions, vinyl only or CD only editions, solo records and so forth. I would call this album #7. I think.

I like this record. It is simple but not simplistic, chill but intense, it cuts through from that other dimension that only Neil can see but it does not drown in the other world’s thick and heavy atmosphere. This music is not pretending to be, or even trying to be, anything.

It feels like rocknroll played in hot, dry weather. It is crunchy and driven, but only driven so far. It is nice that they bothered to write songs, however beautifully casual those songs may or may not be. “Lines In The Sky” (sounds more like “lights” to me, tho) is the first one to stick in my mind, the title popping up as a joyous, desperate refrain at the end of each verse of this bumptious shuffle. But it would have been OK if they hadn’t written songs at all (see Nightclub Version Of The Eternal... which, by the way, sounds great when you are driving through rural Idaho).

Howling Hex XI, which may also be called Out Of Focus or Monster / Bird or SkullHat or something, consists of shortish, begrooved but gritty rocknroll songs, plus a spoken-word-type-thing which is not to be taken unawares. The way the instruments relate to each other is at times reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time electric double-quartet, at other times more like a post-everything 2-guitars-bass-drums-horn rocknroll band (although there is only one guitar) playing in the style of a 1960s R&B band with attitude… The Voidoids also come to mind. You could move to it in a club, you can dig it at home. Howling Hex XI holds up to close scrutiny and also keeps you moving while you cook. You can cook with it.

Neil plays bass on this record. He was on his way there already, playing baritone guitar on Nightclub Version Of The Eternal. I am only aware of him ever playing guitar in a performing band before this, although he has played many instruments in the studio. He wrote only four of the twelve songs on this record. Perhaps these things reflect the evolving democratic nature of The Howling Hex. Neil stated years ago that democratic was what he wanted, as opposed to him with a backup group. The democracization was at that time taking longer than he had hoped. So it goes.

The guitar sounds on this record are ragged and clipped but not actually jagged or painful. The vocals are much the same. The bass playing is mostly subtle and solid, unless it is distorted and soloing loudly. Sometimes there are congas.

Some of the band members on Howling Hex XI, but not all of them, have played on other Howling Hex releases or performed live with the group.

Pound For Pound was the final album by Neil Hagerty’s prior band, Royal Trux. It’s an amazing record in many of the same ways, from instrumentation to sonic approach. I think I only played it twice, for fear I would begin to understand it if I listened any more. I need to keep some mysteries open, lest I get bored.

I am not concerned, here, that I will understand anything, except maybe how not to worry about whether I understand anything or not.