Their Own Outfit
Though not the most famous, or most acclaimed, of London's late-'70s post-punk milieu, The Raincoats may be said scene's best band. As a movement, post-punk is far harder to define than punk, but the emphasis was clearly on moving away from the three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust model of the early punks, placing more influence on odd instrumentation and the synthesis of elements from other genres.
On these counts, The Raincoats (who, for a while, gained fame as being the favorite band of Kurt Cobain) were a distinct, divisive departure from the already-established punk-rock hegemony. Though drawing from the independent, DIY spirit, the ramshackle girl-group —standing at five members on this, their classic debut album— razed away punk's heaving machismo and boy's-own bluster, subverting a stylistic orthodoxy with the most unusual instrumentation.
Stumbling Towards Genius
Slapping together seeming instrumental incongruousness —tinny drum-machines, screechy violin, shambolic drumming, shouted vocals, buzzy guitars— with a precision reminiscent of pushing a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel, the Raincoats' self-titled set should be a mess. In many ways, confessedly, it is: instruments clang and klang in opposing tone. Beats are dropped, tempos shift awkwardly. And, yet, it never sounds anything less than perfect, there a peculiar kind of magic at play throughout.
"Life on the Line" comes closest to embodying this kind of captured-lightning feeling. Over a slow, sloppy four-and-a-half minutes, The Raincoats stop and start the song, again and again, picking up the pace and intensity each time. At times, fueled by Ana da Silva's throaty vocals, the song seems like it's collapsing in an emotional wreck; other times, like when Vicky Aspinall playfully plucks her violin's strings in a kind of punk-rock pizzicato, it seems about to explode in joy. That it's impossible to tell seems to perfectly symbolize The Raincoats, a record whose wayward genius never really makes complete sense.
