The Raincoats - Odyshape - We THRee - WE4 - ****

Nirvana's Kurt Cobain found The Raincoats' can-do, English art school playfulness as invigorating as Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon did their dismissal of gender stereotypes. Nominally still under punk's umbrella, The Raincoats' second album, from 1980, featured then forbidden art rock drummers Robert Wyatt and This Heat's Charles Hayward, betraying wider influences.

Tempos and moods mutate mid-stream. Instruments shift from rhythm to lead at will. Barrier breaking Seventies feminist theory is made flesh. Songs stretch and compress in breathless conversational patterns, like someone's thrilling undergrad big sister in punk trousers, back briefly from London, and telling you all about the world.
A classic.

(11/9/11)