The Best of the Howling Hex

Where does Hagerty end, and the Hex begin? It sounds like an existentialist dilemma, but Hagerty often makes fluid with nomenclature and membership. It’s fairly safe to say, though, that this is the best of Hagerty’s first run of solo material, or at the very least, the most open and all-encompassing. Unsurprisingly, it’s a double. Also unsurprisingly, it goes everywhere, both fast and slow. There are live takes on songs from previous albums — furious versions of “Creature Catcher” and “Rockslide” that are out for blood; there are folksy laments, knock-kneed rockers, and bleak, strung-out, country-esque slow burners. Most of all, Hagerty also recommends with the smeared, blurry experimentation that was at the core of Royal Trux’s “Sick Azz Dog” and Twin Inifinitives, with a small clutch of sound collages, and one bleary-eyed epic, that are as perplexing as they are exciting. The Howling Hex is Hagerty playing all of his cards and seeing what comes up trumps.