The Raincoats aren't the kind of band to get hung up on a sound as mundane as a clock ticking. In "Baby Dog," one of the many sublime songs on their winning return album, the singer and bassist Gina Birch has a fanciful response to the realization that she's unable to bear a child: She imagines putting her dog in a pram and pushing it around the park. A strange but charming lullaby that Birch sings in a croaking croon over a gently pulling bass, "Baby Dog" may be the first great pop song about infertility. As more women defy rock's age paranoia and continue performing into their 30s and 40s, it won't be the last.

The Raincoats may sound so confident on Looking in the Shadows, their fourth album and first release in 13 years, because they've tricked their 15-minute allotment of fame by ducking through a time warp. The band split up in 1984 after seven years of making quirky, quixotic punk rock. They dropped into semilegendary obscurity during the next decade, until Kurt Cobain went in search of their out-of-print debut album. He described that pilgrimage in the liner notes to Nirvana's Incesticide; inspired, the Raincoats reunited in 1994.

Looking in the Shadows finds the two original Raincoats – Birch and the singer and guitarist Ana da Silva – teaming up with the violinist Anne Wood and the drummer Heather Dunn (formerly of Tiger Trap). The Raincoats don't try to relive their glory days on the early '80s British punk scene or cheaply cash in on the music's belated crossover success; instead, they offer what may be their best album, showing they've grown in unexpected but delightful directions. Where the Raincoats' past artiness could sometimes leave them sounding tentative and precious, on Shadows the band sounds accomplished and exuberant.

The producer, Ed Buller (Suede, Spiritualized), is at least partially responsible for the album's success. Mixing in Moog with wah-wah pedals and Wood's soaring fiddle, Buller creates a Wall of Sound environment that matches the Raincoats' moody intensity. But the central unearthed treasures on Shadows are Birch's songs. On wonderfully introspective but infectious tunes like "Don't Be Mean," "Pretty" and "Love a Loser," Birch half-speaks musings about soured relationships, the beauty myth and underdogs, then bursts into strange, quavering vocals that give the eccentric folk singer Victoria Williams a run for her money.

Listening to the Raincoats' old albums (reissued by DGC a couple years ago), it's easy to see why they were such an influence on Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Hole and others. With Looking in the Shadows, the Raincoats may change things all over again. (RS 736)

EVELYN MCDONNELL