"The Raincoats" is not without reason considered one of the highlights of the post-punk period, is regarded as one of the important moments in the breakthrough of women in music and has not been available to buy anywhere for the last ten years.

The album was recorded in 1979 by Ana da Silva, Gina Birch, Palmolive and Vicky Aspinall with Geoff Travis and Mayo Thompson and has been remastered from the original tapes. The CD also features an additional track from the first single "Fairytale In The Supermarket" and comes as an enhanced version with video material from 1977 and 1979 and with the video for "Fairytale In The Supermarket", which was filmed by Gina Birch.

Kurt Cobain wrote the liner notes in 1993: "I really don't know much about The Raincoats except that they recorded some music that has affected me so much that whenever I hear it I'm reminded of a particular time in my life when I was (shall we say) extremely unhappy, lonely and bored. If it weren't for the luxury of putting on that scratchy copy of The Raincoats' first record, I would have had very few moments of peace".