Old Records and Too Much Coffee, episode # 1:

RAINCOATS!

Here’s a picture of The Raincoats;


They look pretty cool, don’t they?

Well after probably half a decade or more residing on my really-should-check-it-out list, the Raincoats debut album (as released on Rough Trade in 1979 and reissued in the early 90s after Kurt Cobain took to talking the hind-leg off a donkey about how great it is, much as I’m about to do) is finally in my hands, thanks to an odd series of events brought about by my friend going to the local library to enquire after it, them not giving it to her but still digging it up from the archives and putting it on the shelf for some reason, and myself randomly strolling in and finding it...

...but anyway, enough faffing about, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Raincoats rule because:

They take all the best elements of punk (loud, chaotic, shouty, impassioned, cheap, homemade, funny, strange and free!), and get further out with them than most of their peers, not just stripping away the flesh of professional musicianship and production values, but kicking down the skeleton of male rock music tradition altogether and building up from scratch with no crappy teachers and music books getting in the way – the alpha and omega of the DIY feminisation of rock n’ roll, no less!

Which is a mugs game commercially speaking – despite being an absurdly talented, tight and generally shit-hot band, they are destined from the start never to achieve recognition of such from anyone who uses phrases like “tight and shit-hot band”. Few people, when throwing The Raincoats on their stereo for the first time, will immediately decide “hey, this rocks”, even though it does, because the signifiers of hey-this-rocks are buried a bit deeper than usual; they’re not blasted across the surface and straight into yr face, like most rock music – depths are at work here within strange frameworks, but it still rocks.

Three or four listens, and well-adjusted ears will be well into the Raincoats, I guarantee it. Listen to what a spectacular drummer Palmolive is – like all the best drummers, she’s totally all over the place whilst still keeping a flawless, instinctive rhythm, and all those martial proto-blastbeats and double-time ‘jump-up-and-down!’ bits she keeps throwing in, perfectly formulated for pogoing in stripy tights and combat boots (or so I would imagine..). Man it’s so joyously awesome – one of the great heroines of the Girl Drummers Appreciation Society, that’s for sure. Then there’s all the rad amplified violin, kinda like Cale on the first Velvets album, but down to earth and punkier, merging into some great electrifying skree with Gina Birch’s jagged, trebly telecaster shredding. And what of Ana De Silva’s totally mad, meandering bass-lines – the kind of things that I’d imagine no one who’d learned to play bass in the conventional fashion would ever come up with. They don’t begin or end, but just sort of lurch daringly through unexplored territory in constant danger of collapse – genius. And listen to Lora Logic crash in on her guest-spot on ‘Black & White’ –HONK!HONK!HONK!– yeah! – since when has any song ever NOT been improved by a frenzied one-note sax solo?

And the songs are killer too of course… they speak of weirdness in supermarkets and the sad lives of kids who are fooled into joining the army and seeing the void opening up before you as you walk down the street, and is it love? If not, what is it? and of not wanting people to look at you, and of plenty of other stuff I must guess at because I can’t make out the words (which is kinda cool in a way, reminds me of hearing the Ramones ‘It’s Alive’ for the first time and not knowing what the hell they were on about half the time, but instinctively knowing it must be great, and isn’t it potentially kinda exciting when you hear a song and just pick out the odd yelped phrase and have to guess the rest, rather than having it all spelt out for you….? but that’s a story for another day, and nobody apart from me seems to obsessively listen to lyrics anymore anyway..). And don’t even get me started on their cover of ‘Lola’ – obviously one of the greatest moments in the history of pop music, that goes without saying, and the perfect first step if anyone fancies going on a downloading spree to investigate what I’m on about.

So yeah, drop-dead brilliant singing too with home-baked tough girl harmonies, yelpin’, squalling, rantin’ and hollerin’, and that unmistakable sense of the band actually playing together in a room, listening to each other and kicking up sparks, each player going all out to summon that extra bit of energy, to avoid boring ‘this-is-my-role-in-the-band’ playing and to throw something new, crazy and off-kilter into every track.

So basically, what I’m building up to here is that, yes, taking into account all of the above, The Raincoats are essentially the girly post-punk equivalent of The Band, and my god, how often does a concept that good come down the rails??