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*** Methadone Actors

ANALOG CABIN

(Cassiel)

Nashville's wryly named Methadone Actors settle into a ragged yet tension-ridden pop groove that's as understated as it is affecting on their debut CD. Think the Velvet Underground of "Pale Blue Eyes" with a stronger Southern accent, which I guess would be the Big Star of "Kanga Roo" with less instrumental baggage -- just warm, round organ tones wrapped around a scruffy guitar and a relaxed backbeat, with S. Stubblefield's deadpan vocals ominously croaking "I'm in control" on the disc's paranoid opening track ("Silver-Tongued Devil").

Stubblefield doesn't wallow in it like Alex Chilton. He approaches life's little disappointments (even his own) like a kid at a car wreck, with a curious mixture of detached horror and unselfconscious curiosity, hoping to catch a glimpse of a telling detail like the poetic make-up-smeared pillow in "Just like Mirrors." There are hints of the same unassuming brilliance Cincinnati's Ass Ponys displayed a few years back in cryptic, unsettling yarns like "Caroline Likes To Make Mud Pies" and "Rocking Horse Games." But good bands don't try to sound like anybody else. They just remind you of other good bands.

-- Matt Ashare

(Methadone Actors join Magnetic Fields, Swizzle, and Ultrabreakfast at the Middle East this Friday, August 15; call 864-EAST.)