Creature comfort

The answer, on the basis of Looking in the Shadows, is yes -- and no. Between the album's flashes of brilliance, there are dry patches, ideas that just don't jell or connect. But my high expectations for the record probably stem in part from my love for the band's first three LPs (1979's The Raincoats, 1981's Odyshape, and 1984's Moving, all of them in print again on Geffen) and in part from my memories of the amazing live show they played at the Middle East in 1994. Instead of merely coasting on nostalgia, they sounded a little unsure of themselves that night -- and thus free to reinvent themselves -- even as they performed what was, to them if not to many of us, deeply familiar material.

Yet it's a thrill to know that the Raincoats are moving forward to give us a CD that shows how much they've learned over the years. The line-up, which now consists of original members Ana da Silva and Gina Birch (who play guitar and bass respectively and trade off on lead vocals), plus Heather Dunn on drums and Anne Wood on violin, still shows a fascination with restless-sounding, disquieting chord changes and hypnotic tribal rhythms, and the vocals sound as fresh as ever. Birch's voice, in particular, seems to have gained strength and power. It's still wispy and shivery -- at times it sounds as if she'd been sucking helium -- but it has more presence than before, like tattered, brilliant-colored chiffon.

And the band show almost as much simmering anger as they did in the early days. In some cases, their anger has just changed course. On "Don't Be Mean," about being snubbed by an ex-lover you still can't help caring for, Birch sings, "Yes, you left, and I behaved badly/But you know, at the time I loved you so madly/Don't be mean, don't be mean, don't be mean." Birch begins the line as an apology, but her rhythmic repetition of the words at the end make them sharp as a stiletto. Suddenly, she's turned them into a growling plea, a command. Wood's violin replies with bright slashes of sound borrowed from the shower scene in Psycho. "Goodbye, dear. Goodbye!", Birch calls out. She'll be the one to have the last word.

Looking in the Shadows is certainly a dark little album. On "57 Ways," Birch sings, "I'm so stupid, I'm gonna kill myself to death"; and even though some of her possible methods might sound funny, the pitted, distressed texture of her voice betrays so much pain, you can't laugh.

Sometimes the Raincoats don't seem to be telling us anything new. But more often than not, they still have the capacity to surprise. On "Baby Dog," a woman unable to have a child talks about adopting a dog instead, but she hasn't yet accepted the tradeoff: "I'll take my dog to the park in a pram . . ./And maybe when he grows up he'll even look a teeny-weeny little bit like me." If at the beginning the song is a woman's stubborn refusal to accept the decision her body has made, by the end it's something different. Against a gentle thrum of guitar that seems to want to comfort her, Birch says under her breath, "My baby has gone down the bunghole/My baby has gone down the drain." The words are so muted you can hardly hear them, but the point seems to be that she needs to hear them.

She continues: "Life goes on, and somehow now I've a baby -- a baby dog"; suddenly, the dog isn't just an also-ran but a strong contender for love. "I've got a baby dog!" she says, as if it were a revelation, and suddenly life seems pretty good. She turns the song's last words into their own kind of percussion -- "Dog dog dog dog dog dog doggydog" -- and in their utter silliness they sound buoyant, free from worry and care. "Baby Dog" goes from being weirdly haunting to just plain silly, but in the end it's triumphantly moving -- a recognition that it's not who you love but how you love that matters. And more proof that even among the woolly array of punk-era survivors, the Raincoats are still the damnedest furry creatures.