The Raincoats' Gina Birch Delivers 'Trouble'

07-13-2025

(BHM) The Raincoats co-founder, songwriter, filmmaker, and feminist icon, Gina Birch, has released her eagerly awaited second solo record, Trouble, via Third Man Records. Known for a wildly diverse artistic career, Gina Birch had an undeniable and outspoken hand in shaping the UK's independent music scene.

Trouble, produced by Youth, continues that ever-evolving mission with 11 fiery yet deeply introspective new songs, fusing post-punk, dub, experimental rock, and more into a singular statement of intent, expressing her lifelong commitment to uninhibited creativity and an artist's purpose in letting her audience in on her wildest thoughts and innermost emotions.

Trouble sees Birch teaming up once again with GRAMMY Award-winning producer and Killing Joke founding member Youth (Paul McCartney, The Orb, The Verve) and engineer/mixer Michael Rendall (Peter Murphy, The Jesus and Mary Chain) - the same duo who helped capture the rugged-yet-refined sound of her critically acclaimed 2023 solo debut, I Play My Bass Loud.

Recorded on the top floor of Youth's London home and fueled by "plenty of tea and toast," the sessions also included participation from musicians Jenny Green and Marie Merlet - both of whom play in Gina's live band, The Unreasonables - as well as longtime collaborator Helen McCookerybook, who has worked with her on various film and concert projects throughout the years. Songs like "I'm Going To Live Forever" and the electro-and-dub-tinged "Keep to the Left" are not only eclectic in sonic genre, but play like stitched-together narrative vignettes, fly-on-the-wall scenes in which Birch describes meeting a stranger on a train, or a flare up with her teenage daughter, or the nostalgia of driving past a certain part of your neighborhood that's been unchanged for as long as you can remember. Fueled by the politics of the everyday, Trouble stands proudly as a feminist work of art not because of slogans or placards, but rather in its candid portrayal of a forward-thinking female artist simply existing.

"The record title refers to all the mini revolutions that have occurred in my life," says Gina Birch, "not following the usual paths, falling down holes, making the same mistakes over and over, trouble of being a young woman at a time our options were generally secretary, mother or sex worker. Trouble I've caused and trouble I'm in...

The album is also an antidote to this by celebrating everything I can while recognizing behaviors that may be disordered or strange. It's a journey through my brain, thoughts, memories, conversations...while I'm sitting with my bass, loops, guitar, and laptop. I don't censor subjects, I just write them down and see where they take me. The pleasure is in untangling the thoughts and finding a way through."

The album was initially heralded with the release of the epic six-minute, "Causing Trouble Again," which was inspired by 2024's Women in Revolt, an exhibition of feminist art and activism at Tate Britain which included one of Birch's most recognized art pieces, 1977's 3 Minute Scream, a landmark short film in which she stares down the camera and, as the title suggests, screams for the duration of a Super 8 cartridge.

Propelled by Birch's springy bass and a breakneck drum machine beat, "Causing Trouble Again" crescendos until hundreds of names of inspiring women (women who have indeed "caused trouble") are being read aloud by several female artists, including experimental music pioneer Cosey Fanni Tutti and writer/painter Caroline Coon. They mention everyone from Nina Simone to Dolly Parton, Grace Jones to Louise Bourgeois, Elizabeth I to Stormy Daniels, and more. The result is extraordinary - a jubilant exploration of what it means to go against society's grain, overlaid with fuzzy guitar solos and rebellious flair.

The video for the song was directed by Birch and famed photographer/filmmaker Dean Chalkley and features an all-star collective of fellow female artists including Birch's longtime friend and co-founder of The Raincoats, Ana da Silva, Neo Naturists co-founder Christine Binnie, singer-songwriter Amy Rigby, X-Ray Spex and Essential Logic co-founder Lora Logic, painter Daisy Parris, artist Georgina Starr, writer Jill Westwood, multi-disciplinary artist and activist Bobby Baker, award-winning costume designer Annie Symons, veteran photographer and Raincoats collaborator Shirley O'Loughlin, amongst many others. The second single, "Doom Monger," followed and featured an official music video also directed by Birch and Chalkley.

Birch will celebrate the arrival of Trouble with a series of live dates with her band-mates "The Unreasonables," Marie Merlet, and Jenny Green (who are also featured on the album and have co-written several songs), including a Rough Trade East Instore in London on July 16th, a special show at London's 100 Club, and appearing as special guests on Miki Berenyi Trio's upcoming North American tour. The 15-city run gets underway October 10 at Washington, DC's Pearl Street Warehouse and then travels through a tour finale at West Hollywood, CA's famed Roxy Theatre. Highlights include stops at such historic venues as Brooklyn, NY's Music Hall of Williamsburg (October 11), Toronto, ON's The Great Hall (October 15), Chicago, IL's Lincoln Hall (October 17), Seattle, WA's Neptune Theatre (October 23), and San Francisco, CA's Great American Music Hall (October 27).