Plays That Good Old Rock and Roll

He’s back with a band, of sorts, though much as with Royal Trux, Hagerty loves to shuffle the players around, to keep things surprising. If his self-titled solo debut was a man alone in the studio, Plays That Good Old Rock And Roll sounds like tentative friends gathering in a room together, for the first time in a while. But the players here are great – Tim Barnes, Dan Brown, Mighty Flashlight (aka Mike Fellows), Seven (aka Tim DeWit) – and the songs are… well, they’re Hagerty songs, which means they have an umbilical to classic rock’n’roll, but they’re just about bent outta shape; you can see the contours of history and form there, but Hagerty’s looking at everything sideways up. In amongst the clatter and clamour, there are some Hagerty classics, and “Rockslide” and “Gratitude,” in particular, are lasting gems.