West Hill Hall, Brighton, Sat
5th Nov
“We're like those clothes they make
inside out, we're showing all our seams”. After confessing to
skipping a section from the last song, bassist Gina Birch seemingly
ad libs the line. And it's about the most astute thing I've ever
heard anyone say about this band.
I wrote a piece a while back about how the two great girl
bands of the post-punk era (you can probably guess which two) worked
in an opposite but complementary fashion. And indeed it rather
marvellously seems that, while every boy band was formed in the wake
of the Sex Pistols, it was seeing the Slits that first galvanised the
Raincoats. Listen to a Slits record and it's like the local gang are
inviting you to join them for a while, as they go on their
shoplifting sprees or other wild adventures. While with the Raincoats
it's like stumbling on the secret den where the outsider kids hang
out.
In the post-punk history 'Rip It Up', Simon Reynolds commented on how “unrocked”
their sound was. Undriven by the standard rhythm section, their
music's sketchy and slightly tentative, as if feeling it's way into
existence. This sense of music for misfits and outcasts made
by misfits and outcasts, which probably couldn't
follow a straight path if it wanted, makes the band idiosyncratic to
the point of inimitable and yet at the very same time a herald of
indie. Certainly the track 'In Love' might be the
only song in that whole over-subscribed genre to accurately describe
the hopeless topsy-turviness that situation instills, which
can feel as much like being hit by an infection as it does anything
else.
After Lennon and McCartney, many great
bands comprise two separate, distinct characters writing in separate,
distinct styles. And Birch has described herself and Ana da Silva, the only remaining
original members, as “polar opposites”. Gawky but engaging, Birch
best fits Kim Gordon's description of the band as “ordinary people
playing extraordinary music”. While Da Silva, playing more of an
older sister role, talks less and has a quiet assurance about her
which radiates an anti-cool cool. Birch's songs can feature confused
characters in a confusing world, sometimes barely convinced of their
own existence. While Da Silva's are more mysterious and indefinable,
akin to some of John Cale's stranger ballads.
Following their own rules as ever,
their set is mostly comprised of post-reformation songs, with the
classic tracks largely confined to the end. This meant most of the
set I'd not heard before, but it didn't matter in the slightest. A
friend exulted afterwards that they sound no better rehearsed now
than they did back then, and I do know what he means. They've never
polished or commodified their sound, they're still in touch with that
initial impetus when they were rehearsing in a squat basement. The
only weakness of the new songs is that they can stray slightly into
the pedagogical. Feminism was always innate to the band, but in an
instinctive rather than banner-waving sense.
Trash Kit supported, playing the
skittering off-beat rhythms of post-punk mixed with Afro-beat. I'd previously seen them supporting the Ex a couple of years
ago, where they sounded good. But they seem better now, as if their
sound's maturing as they go.
I couldn't find anything contemporary
for the compulsory YouTube clip, so here's two tracks from back in
the day...
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