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The Raincoats
The Raincoats
We ThRee Records
Article written by
Ged M - Nov 16, 2009
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The Raincoats
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For all its claims to be revolutionary, punk was at least as sexist and patriarchal as the society it nominally attacked and the music it despised. Consequently, much punk rock is just another branch on the rock family tree. Instead, some of the most inventive music was made by bands fighting musical, cultural and gender stereotypes, key among them being the Slits, Kleenex and the Raincoats. It was these bands that took the lo-fi, anyone-can-do-it attitude of punk and joined it to a political, artistic and avant garde sensibility that set the tone for the whole post-punk scene.
To hear what that insurgent noise sounded like, you can now hear The Raincoats’ 1979 album, originally on Rough Trade Records, which has just been re-released on their own label. It’s not the first time it’s been re-released though; in 1993 it was reissued with sleeve notes by Kurt Cobain and Kim Gordon after the former had outed himself as a fanboy when he tried to buy it at the Rough Trade shop.
The Raincoats had their own sound and voice (and a female manager who wasn’t just playing a man’s game). They sang songs critiquing shopping, war and patriarchy, among other things, and they played an angular, pared down sort of rock’n’roll – ‘The Void’ has a guitar solo that’s almost picked out note by note. Vicky Aspinall’s violin frequently takes the lead while Palmolive’s drumming is always spare, unshowy but essential. Unlike the punk bands, they harmonise a lot and their voices work generously together. Tracks like the oddly time-signatured ‘Off Duty Trip’ and the zig-zagging ‘Black and White’, prominently adorned by Laura Logic’s skronking sax, show the influence of the avant garde, the latter seeming to conflate the New York Dolls and Captain Beefheart. It’s hard to pick standouts but in this strange iTunes world I’d mention two: ‘Fairytale in the Supermarket’ is an amazing arrangement of scratchy violin, sputtering guitar riffs and slow-fast rhythms, and has a vocal from Ana da Silva that just oozes control. Their cover of the Kinks’ ‘Lola’, meanwhile, loses the comedy and builds to an intensity that wasn’t in the original and is both weird but wonderful.
Thirty years on this is still brilliant music, both for their individual sound and for the influence they’ve cast on the Riot Grrrl movement and all our favourite Brooklyn bands, to name but a few of those inspired. As Mr Cobain knew, this is one of the records that you just have to have.
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