The Raincoats return with Odyshape

The Raincoats :  Only Loved At Night

On June 1, 1981 The Raincoats released their second album, Odyshape. It would enter the UK Indie charts at #6. If the band sounded like they were still getting to know their instruments on the debut, here the charm lies in the multitude of instruments and the hypnotic quality of their music. 

We wanted to push ourselves, so when we made our second album, we weren’t going to make a sequel to the first.," guitarist Ana da Silva tells Louder Than War. "We wanted to do something different.”

They found that difference at Manny's Music in midtown Manhattan. The store had a treasure trove of instruments. “I bought a few little things there and Gina bought a balafon," da Silva said "We had all of these new instruments, so of course, we wanted to use them!”  

Spin's Alternative Guide has this line about the album : Odyshape has a reputation as some sort of mystical transcendence of rockdom in New Age textures, but it's unmistakably a rock record.

A balfon

YEAR END PAZZ AND JOP BALLOT FROM GREIL MARCUS:

 Go-Go's: Beauty and the Beat (I.R.S.) 20; 

 David Lindley: El-Rayo-X (Asylum) 20; 

 Red Crayola with Art & Language: Kangaroo? (Rough Trade) 15; 

 Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Reactor (Reprise) 10; 

 The Mekons (Red Rhino import) 10; 

 Joy Division: Still (Factory import) 5; 

 Rickie Lee Jones: Pirates (Warner Bros.) 5; 

 The "King" Kong Compilation (Mango) 5; 

 Au Pairs: Playing with a Different Sex (Human) 5; 

 Raincoats: Odyshape (Rough Trade) 5.

 

Most Popular Posts of 2019

You never know what post is going to connect with readers or why. The Top Ten posts were mostly about esoteric albums like A Can of Bees by The Soft Boys.

Top 5 Most Popular Posts

1. The Soft Boys A Can of Bees.

"As we learned to play electric music, we festooned it with harmonies and booby-trapped it with odd time signatures." - Robyn Hitchcock

2. The Raincoats self-titled.

The band lived as squatters, paying no rent and living on air and the occasional meal and bath.

 “It was a homemade, chaotic sound,” bassist and vocalist Gina Burch says. “The way we lived seeped in.”

3. Pil: Metal Box

How the boxes themselves turned out was awkward in the extreme...They were hard to prise apart, and it was impossible to get the records out. It was appropriate, though , because what you were about to listen to could've been construed as distinctly unpleasant--it was made for those consumers who were prepared to put in a bit of effort. - John Lydon

4. The Misfits : "Night of the Living Dead"

The punk band printed up 2000 copies to be sold at the door to their shows. In contrast, t-shirts sales featuring Misfit ghouls have sold well over a million by now. Even my daughter is wearing one today.

5. Godley and Creme : Freeze Frame

The idea was driven by a new piece of equipment called a harmoniser. It's used in studios all the time these days as a corrective device to get performances in tune, but this early version came with a keyboard. You could put a sound through a harmoniser and if you wanted an instrument or voice to hit a certain note that it hadn't, you could play that note on the keyboard. So we got to thinking, 'Let's forget about singing for the moment. What happens if I vocalize these words in a monotone - do an entire song on one note - and get Lol to play my vocal on the harmoniser keyboard?' That was the experiment. It worked pretty well. Predated Cher's digital gurglings by a few years. -Kevin Godley

Next 5:

The Shoes Present Tense
The Brains "Money Changes Everything"
The Pop Group Y
Marianne Faithfull Broken English
The Jam Setting Sons.



Least Popular:

For several weeks during the summer something strange happened in which I lost 95%-98% of the views I would regularly get. So the quality of the albums is not the blame here.

1. Dire Straits Communique
2. Japan Life in Tokyo
3. Swell Maps
4. Joni Mitchell Mingus
5. Sniff n The Tears " Drivers Seat"

Tough On My Emotion

The Raincoats : In Love

[Purchase]

On November 21, 1979 The Raincoats released their debut album on Rough Trade Records. Inspired by The Slits, this all-female band produced what Pitchfork calls "34 minutes of clattering feminist outsider art"  that may take multiple listenings before connecting. The band lived as squatters, paying no rent and living on air and the occasional meal and bath. 

“It was a homemade, chaotic sound,” bassist and vocalist Gina Burch says. “The way we lived seeped in.”

From liner notes by Kurt Cobain, who listed the album among his Top 50 favorites: 

"I don't really know anything about the Raincoats except that they recorded some music that has affected me so much that, whenever I hear it I'm reminded of a particular time in my life when I was (shall we say) extremely unhappy, lonely, and bored. If it weren't for the luxury of putting that scratchy copy of the Raincoats' first record, I would have had very few moments of peace. I suppose I could have researched a bit of history about the band but I feel it's more important to delineated the way I feel and how they sound. When I listen to the Raincoats I feel as if I'm a stowaway in an attic, violating and in the dark. Rather than listening to them I feel like I'm listening in on them. We're together in the same old house and I have to be completely still or they will hear me spying from above and, if I get caught – everything will be ruined because it's their thing."

From Robert Christgau who gives the album a B+:

In their dubious pro-am musicianship and unavoidably spacy ambience, both of Rough Trade's very modern girl groups recall late-'60s art-rock of the Cantabrigian school--Kevin Ayers, Soft Machine, that ilk. But where Essential Logic also recalls art-rock of the Juilliard school, the Raincoats' punk-goes-folk-rock feels friendly even in its arty hostility. If the tentativeness of the rhythms and vocals is accentuated by the medium tempos they prefer, the unevenness of their songwriting means some of it is very good. Sure the multiple genderfuck "Lola" is what sucks you in, but you may end up preferring the other side. As with Lora Logic's sax, the signature and hook is Vicky Aspinall's violin, which she saws rather than plays.

From Red Starr, writing for Smash Hits a 7/10:

The Raincoats play vigorous, passionate, unorthodox music but the sound here is so woefully thin that it doesn't really do justice to their challenging songs and arrangements. Whereas The Slits sounded bold and confident, The Raincoats mostly come across shrill and desperate, though Side 2 is much more like it. But try and hear it. Best tracks: "You're A Million", "No Looking At Me".

From some guy who calls himself Weekend Cigar Smoker on Rate Your Music:

1st listen: What is this shit? You'd have to be a total cunt to listen to this 
2nd: This is mad. Its shit 
3rd. Why do I keep listening to this? What brings me back? 
4th. Its interesting i'll give it that. I dont think ive heard anything like it 
5th. Fuck me its brilliant. I am a total cunt. But a happy one

A Clock A Clock A Clock

The Raincoats : Fairytale in the Supermarket

[Purchase]

In the Spring of 1979, Rough Trade Records released The Raincoats debut single "Fairytale in the Supermarket". Listen to it more than once. It's a grower. With the exception of violinist Vicky Aspinall, this all female band is made up not of virtuoso musicians but smart art school students who discovered their own distinctly uncommercial take on punk rock. 

In the liner notes for the debut album that followed, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain wrote why the band's music moved him:

When I listen to the Raincoats I feel as if I'm a stowaway in an attic, violating and in the dark. Rather than listening to them I feel like I'm listening in on them. We're together in the same old house and I have to be completely still or they will hear me spying from above and, if I get caught – everything will be ruined because it's their thing.

Comedian Danny Baker was not impressed. He said "they are so bad that every time a waiter drops a tray we'd all get up and dance".

The B side "In Love" made Pitchfork's list of the 200 best songs of the 1970's :

“In Love” is The Raincoats’ most direct song, and yet it describes the most indirect feeling ever, one called “lovesick” for a reason that “In Love” proves. It is the sound of infatuation that crawls under your skin and makes you delirious, of butterflies that possess you.