Quasi’s first three seminal studio albums – 1997’s ‘R&B Transmogrification’, 1998’s ‘Featuring “Birds”’ and 1999’s ‘Field Studies’ – reissued on vinyl.

Indie rock had seen power duos before – Guv’ner, Royal Trux, Buckingham-Nicks, Carpenters – but they’d never sounded like Quasi. Drumming like a controlled detonation; mutant blues coming out of an electric harpsichord or guitar by turns. Backwards through the backwoods of AM pop and ‘Pebbles’ psych to create a new form: bar room baroque. Honey-golden multitracked vocals and some of the bleakest, black-eyed, black-hearted lyrics put to paper since Lou Reed woke up in a bad mood. All played with the kind of ramshackle ease that only comes from weeks of practice, months in the van and serious chops.

Janet Weiss and Sam Coomes first collaborated in 1990 as Motorgoat but by 1993 they had become Quasi. 1997’s ‘R&B Transmogrification’ is where they define their double act. Musically Coomes and Weiss are always greater than the sum of their parts. They just fit together, like a two-piece jigsaw puzzle.

‘Featuring “Birds”’ is Quasi at their peak, melding jams-kicking rock & roll, punk action and chord shifts that feel like the change of a season. The success of Weiss’s other group, Sleater-Kinney, in the meantime was clearly only firing up, rather than undercutting Quasi. The songs slide from science fictional dystopia on ‘Our Happiness Is Guaranteed’ and ‘I Never Want to See You Again’, to wage-slave class war on ‘The Happy Prole’ and ‘Sea Shanty’.

Does ‘Field Studies’ have an Elliott Smith turn to the harmonies? Maybe both Quasi and Smith have a Heatmiser influence, given that’s the Portland band that Coomes and Smith had played in together. As one of their biggest fans, ‘Clouds’ was one of Smith’s favourite live covers and Smith plays bass on three of Field Studies’ tracks, returning the favour for the many live shows in which Weiss and Coomes were his backing group.