by Max Kaplan (@kapslock3)
The Raincoats is now 40. Whenever a seminal record like this reaches an anniversary, everyone who was or wasn’t around at the time chimes in to say that it “has aged like fine wine” or “still sounds as if it could’ve been released yesterday.” For The Raincoats, as influential and prescient as it’s been for decades’ worth of individuals and movements alike, the album itself sounds no less than 40 years old.
If the record were a person, it’d now be coming to terms with middle age, and regarding emerging scenes with a tentative, but reassuring eye—which is an odd thing to say about a record that has been heralded for its youthful abandon and ramshackle charisma.
But for all of the lives that an album like The Raincoats has lived—from its emergence in the legendary Rough Trade catalogue of the late 70’s, to its excavation from near-obscurity by the Olympia scene of the 80’s and 90’s, to its cinematic role as a totem of DIY cool in 10 Things I Hate About You and 20th Century Women—it’s all the more worth revisiting at a moment when unfettered access to every strain of music through curated playlists, algorithms, online radio stations and mp3 blogs has launched listeners into the ether looking for a sonic fix as refreshing as The Raincoats must’ve sounded to the several thousand ears that it first reached in 1979.
Each song daringly bursts open the bindings of a story that doesn’t need to resort to shouting in your ear to grab your attention. On first listen, the arrangements are meant to jolt you with a clamorous orchestra of instruments that pluck, rattle, chime, creep, stop-and-start; together sketching a vibrant picture book of the dour London that Ana, Gina, Vicky, and Palmolive called home.
“Fairytale in the Supermarket” charges at you. Ana De Silva’s bitingly deadpan vocals drive a song about a fairytale which sounds like nothing out of an actual fairytale. Violins saw, and choruses rally together chanting, “Honey Don’t Worry! This is just a fairytale! Happening in the supermarket!”
The second story, “No Side to Fall In,” opens to a two-minute avant-pop gem that dazzles in its every twist and turn. The song is an affirmation. Weaving between skittering strings and over-lapping vocal chants, The Raincoats unleash a playful ingenuity that can be traced in anything from the Flying Nun groups to Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective.
“Black and White,” picks up where “Supermarket” leaves off. The propulsion of the song only amplifies the disorientation of the anti-love story being told. Like a train going off the rails or a biker barreling downhill without breaks, the narrator attempts shaking off the futility of an arbitrary love. And oh yeah, Lora Logic’s sax tears through the track like a viper cutting loose.
The most familiar story told on this record just happens to be an adapted one. “Lola” is a faithful cover of the Kinks’ 1970 hit about an evening spent in pursuit of either a man in drag or someone that’s transitioning. Through the The Raincoats’ lens, the song is flipped from a cheeky lads’ sing-along into buoyant celebration of sexual freedom. Lines like “I'm not the world's most masculine man, but I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man” are given new meaning through the Raincoats’ non-ironic sincerity.
The Raincoats experienced a watershed year in 1993. Somewhere around that time, one of their songs appeared on a mixtape handed from Tobi Vail to Kathleen Hana (of Bikini Kill). Not much later, the first CD reissue of their debut followed their immortalization as one of Kurt Cobain’s 50 favorite albums; scribbled out on notebook sheet (between label mates Kleenex and Young Marble Giants). The list itself has become a sort of gateway to outsider/underground music for those Nirvana fans with an ear for the off-kilter artists that inspired the poster boy of the “Alternative Nation.”
Though the Raincoats are inextricably linked to their influential flag-fliers, they’ve come to be seen as a manifestation of the post-punk era where communal expression trumped star-power; and song structure was unchained from the three-chord gob-fest of the male-dominated punk cadre, who eventually drove their own scene into the ground.
In her recent 33 1/3 book on The Raincoats’ debut album, Jenn Pelly demystifies the common narrative of the Raincoats as an anonymous collection of punk-adjacent chicks in sweaters. She highlights the band’s diverse geopolitical backgrounds. Around Ana De Silva, coming from fascist Spain, Palmolive from fascist Portugal, and Gina Birch and Vicky Aspinall from the recession-stricken UK, the band recorded music that was illuminated by the perspectives that each member brought to the collective.
The Raincoats is an unabashedly feminine and borderless album. It’s a confident and adventurous reminder of what can be accomplished when you boldly turn away from the hyper-stylized crowd, and create art that speaks to you.