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In my view This Is Still It is chock-full of so much consistently great music that’s it definitely the equal of [Gang Of Four's] "Entertainment!," and may even be superior.
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The vocals: a cloying, toying mix 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.
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Several of the songs here are top-tier extrovert post-punk, neatly organized threshings as invigorating as any material from Mission of Burma or their farther-flung counterparts.
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The pair can knock out enormous, memorable hooks from limited resources, the instrumental make-up stripped-bare in the extreme, just drums and guitar. But scarcity of equipment never once hinders their considerable ambition and inventiveness.
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Perhaps they're better this way, as a hidden gem to be stumbled across or searched out. It's certainly worth the effort, as they sure as hell don't make them like this any more.
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That such a glorious and previously unheralded collection of tunes could appear so far into what seems like a decade plus wave of reissue fever is a wider comment about how much great music still out there waiting to be unearthed. The Method Actors deserve to be placed alongside the very best acts of any scene or era.
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Just thrill to how rock music this relentlessly complex and irregular (“No Condition”), this shamelessly, gloriously over-the-top (“Do the Method,” a distant cousin to the speedier version of “Radio Free Europe” and the fellas’ own would’ve-been dance craze), this stylistically reckless (“Bleeding,” which almost sounds like a completely derailed club cut) and this gleefully repetitive and obnoxious (“Rang-a-Tang”) can still sound so anthemic and galvanizing.
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This band didn't have the sublime commercial melodies of R.E.M, or the innate propulsion and dance-inflected propensities of the The B-52s, but they were nonetheless a briliant Athens act that never got their due. Here's hoping this compilation changes that, and that listeners also follow Buck's heed from the liner notes, when he suggests, "Maybe this release will be a good introduction to the career of Vic Varney, who is still making great records 25 years later."
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