This thirtieth anniversary release of The Raincoats’ seminal debut album should help them clamber away from being merely a footnote in Kurt Cobain’s mythology.
The Nirvana demi-god was seemingly hugely indebted to this riveting mix of spiky proto-Riot Grrrl pop for providing him respite during his darker times, but their genre-blasting breakthrough as one of Britain’s first all-girl post-punk bands is a more fitting legacy. Their warped, deadpan cover of ‘Lola’ by The Kinks is deliciously subverted – Ana da Silva singing from the ‘male’ perspective about a man whose first love turns out to be a transvestite.
Magnificently timeless – to be unearthed and taken delight in.
7/10
Word by John Freeman