Howling Hex

***THE HOWLING HEX are back in town—you can feel them in the air, man! The Best of The Howling Hex is a new album of new music by a new incarnation of The Howling Hex, now broadcasting as a band from the big town of Denver, Colorado. After years staked out in the border country of southern New Mexico, guitarist and leader NEIL HAGERTY is back in the phonebook, giving The Hex an urban soapbox on which to stand for the first time in their ten years of re-re-revisionist history. Mile high style seems to be a good match for the mercurial back-road attire of The Howling Hex. For this new album, the wide-opens spaces and New Border rhythms of recent albums have been telescoped and accelerated into a high-stepping, uptempo night on the tiles. Kicking the beat with New Border funk is a rhythm section complete with drummer, last heard on a Howling Hex record back in 2007. Also redux is the functionality of the “ditty”—most recently experienced on Earth Junk. The Best of The Howling Hex includes seven shortish songs that weave the wild spirits and far-flung textures of Wilson Semiconductors into tightly compressed sing-songs, before turning the jam out to bring the levee home. Hagerty’s guitar tone is an alien wonder, and the careening beat of the band unleashes him to fill solo spots with fervor. No Export to Europe. (STREET DATE - 2/19/2013)