Altered Zones

[Left to right: Ana da Silva & Gina Birch of The Raincoats; photo by Shirley O'Loughlin]

By Jenn Pelly

The Raincoats: "Shouting Out Loud"

It's a damp Thursday afternoon in Brooklyn when I meet Ana da Silva and Gina Birch at the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg, where they have been practicing with their sometimes-drummer, Vice Cooler, for two days. Founding members of the British post-punk band The Raincoats, Ana and Gina, both Londoners, are prepping for a short string of tour dates in support of Odyshape-- their recently remastered 1981 sophomore album, which they reissued on their own We ThRee imprint earlier this month. Meeting your musical heroes is hard. But with their humility and easy laughter, the Raincoats made it easy.

"If there were one hundred female bands doing something interesting, maybe we wouldn't be here," Ana half-jokes, sitting on stage at the empty Knitting Factory. Her Portuguese accent recalls the sing-shout verses that date back to their earliest singles, like "Fairytale In The Supermarket." There is a refreshing, clear-headed quality to The Raincoats' ideas about defiance, and their live performance remains full of hopeful energy.

After meeting at art school in London in 1976, Gina and Ana (who hails from Portugal, and is eight years Birch's senior) formed The Raincoats and became one of the first bands to sign to Rough Trade Records. "I didn't see the music business as something I related to," Ana tells me, "but Rough Trade was very much-- you do what you want."

The band's four records eschewed technical proficiency for strange structures and an overarching feminist ethos. As self-described "art musicians," they used portable cassette players and small, rudimentary studios to record their unconventional protest songs. But while their rock-oriented 1979 debut, The Raincoats, is now considered a definitive post-punk record, the serenely peculiar Odyshape is noteworthy for its skeletal, avant-gardist approach. It is particularly fitting that The Raincoats, dubbed "The Godmothers of Grunge" by Kurt Cobain, should land on American turf in 2011, amid the Kurtmania of Nevermind’s twentieth birthday and the recent historicizing of Riot Grrrl's inaugural Summer. The Raincoats exerted significant influence over both musical moments.

We cannot blame Ana and Gina for being unfamiliar with Altered Zones-- Ana still thinks of recording on computers as a "futuristic" idea. But when I briefly explain that the site covers "weird DIY music," Birch brightens: "That sounds perfect for us!" Below, we discuss their current projects, the story of Odyshape, and a recent performance the Raincoats call "the pinnacle" of their career.