Vic Chesnutt – Little/West of Rome/Drunk/Is the Actor Happy?

If his songwriter peers were in charge of the music industry, Vic Chesnutt would no doubt be a major star. Beloved and championed by artists more commercially successful than he, the Athens, Georgia, artist boasts a body of work that ranks among the most formidable of any singer-songwriter currently active.

These beautifully produced reissues testify to the quirky genius that prompted fellow Athenian Michael Stipe, back in 1988, to coax a then-recalcitrant Chesnutt into a studio for the first time. Recorded in a single day, the debut album, Little, served notice of Chesnutt’s singular gift for finding deep truths in the commonplace, and unfurled his affectionate embrace of the sad and funny foibles that comprise the bulk of our lives.

Recorded in 1990 and released in 1992, and also produced by Stipe, West Of Rome refined the lo-fi approach of Little, to a point. While Chesnutt’s strummy acoustic guitar and rubbery southern drawl remain front and center, the candlelit vibe is punctuated, at times, by the low moan of a cello or by simple, lovely piano figures.

Both 1993’s Drunk and 1995’s Is The Actor Happy? found Chesnutt reaching toward a fuller “band” sound. (The latter album, in particular, sometimes evokes thoughts of a southern gothic version of Neil Young & Crazy Horse; moreover, the fuzz-guitar romp “Naughty Fatalist”, from Drunk, sounds like a template for R.E.M.’s Monster.) For better or worse, these releases also saw Chesnutt employing more conventional verse-chorus-verse song structures. That said, each of these albums is dotted with enough acoustic balladry to satisfy any fan of Chesnutt at his most minimalist.

As powerful as these releases were in their original incarnations, New West has gone to great lengths to give the packaging and the music even more wallop. Each disc features a generous helping of bonus tracks relevant to the period; recently penned essays by Stipe, Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye, photographer Jem Cohen and poet Forrest Gander lend thoughtful perspective. For West of Rome, Chesnutt and the reissue co-producer Peter Jesperson even went so far as to reconfigure the song sequence to conform to Chesnutt and Stipe’s original intent. The 20-second interval of silence that occurs before the bonus tracks kick in, on each album, is a nice touch as well.