The Method Actors thrived in the 1980s in Athens, Ga., in the same scene that gave rise to R.E.M., the B-52's, Pylon, Love Tractor, and many more. This was the Athens shrouded in tangles of wild kudzu and the kind of homey eccentricity on display in the great rock-doc Athens, Ga.-Inside/Out, in which pretty much everyone and everything seems weird in some way. In the liner notes to this great new reissue CD, Method Actors guitarist Vic Varney talks about Athens as an inviting little town and calls Ricky Wilson from the B-52's his "favorite rock and roll guitar player. Ever." And R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, no slouch of a guitarist himself, writes of harboring much Method Actors love in his Athens days and standing in front of Varney night after night "watching his hands and trying to figure how he did what he did."
What Varney did was striking, and really does count as some of the most distinctive post-punk guitar work ever done. The same goes for his bandmate David Gamble, who played drums in a way that was highly versatile and even more highly musical. That was it for the Method Actors: two guys, both with wild styles that grew all the more wild as they grew more tightly coiled. And with the release of this reissue record, This Is Still It, they still sound as thrilling as they did 30 years ago.
This Is Still It opens with "Do the Method", a blast of a song that sounds like the work of way more than a duo. Varney's guitar traffics in a beautiful mess of open-tuned jangle and jags, with a complex sense of internal melody that could handle the duty of a hook on its own. Gamble's drums fan out and spray the space with frenetic kicks pumped beneath all the splashy cymbals and fills. And then the vocals: a cloying, toying mix [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| of insouciant sass and arty call-and-response jabs, all delivered with an unhinged sense of preening and play.
That's pretty much the Method Actors method condensed, and it plays out to deliriously rewarding and consistent effect on a CD that collects songs recorded from 1980 to 1981. Hints of other sounds from before and after drift in-- DNA, Polvo, Gang of Four, Captain Beefheart-- but the Method Actors sound too wound up in their mania to get distracted by anything from the outside. Here really is a total find from what would almost have to be an empty post-punk vault at this point. And it's a find that sounds like it lost no sleep while waiting around to be found again.
