BLISTERING NEW SINGLE HERALDS LEGENDARY POST-PUNK ICON’S
EAGERLY AWAITED SECOND SOLO ALBUM, TROUBLE,
OUT JULY 11 ON THIRD MAN RECORDS
Photo Credit: Dean Chalkley
OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO FEATURING
ALL-STAR COLLECTIVE OF FEMALE ARTISTS PREMIERES TODAY – WATCH
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR SUPPORTING MIKI BERENYI TRIO
BEGINS OCTOBER 10 IN WASHINGTON, DC
ALBUM PRE-ORDERS / PRE-SAVES AVAILABLE NOW
Legendary artist, Raincoats co-founder, songwriter, filmmaker, and feminist icon Gina Birch has announced her eagerly awaited second solo album, Trouble, arriving via Third Man Records on Friday, July 11. Pre-orders are available now. Trouble is heralded by today’s premiere of the album’s blistering centerpiece, “Causing Trouble Again,” available for streaming now. An official music video – directed by Birch and famed photographer/filmmaker Dean Chalkley and featuring 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, and many more – is streaming now on YouTube.
“For the ‘Causing Trouble Again’ video, after hearing Bob Dylan sing about a white ladder all covered with water, I became obsessed with white ladders,” Gina Birch says. “ I decided to use five white ladders, three with seven rungs…I realized later that this references Jacob’s Ladder and a connection from Earth to heaven, but I think I was thinking of ladders as a symbol of getting on, getting up. I wanted to have a choreographed movement with four of us with these ladders. How do we move with ladders? Do we move together, do we fight, do we dance?
“I also wanted to reference the wind scene from the film, The Colour of Pomegranates, and to include as many artist women from the Women in Revolt exhibition as I could. I wanted them to be troublesome, or just to shout ‘Causing trouble!’ I ended up inviting all the artist musician women I knew who could make the shoot, and it was a fantastic meeting of great women, many of whom had never met each other before.”
“Causing Trouble Again” 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. Birch created the epic six-minute track by inviting several female artists, including experimental music pioneer Cosey Fanni Tutti and writer/painter Caroline Coon, to record themselves saying the names of women who have inspired them – women who have indeed “caused trouble.”
Propelled by Birch’s springy bass and a breakneck drum machine beat, “Causing Trouble Again” crescendos until hundreds of names are being read aloud: Nina Simone to Dolly Parton, Grace Jones to Louise Bourgeois, Elizabeth I to Stormy Daniels. 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.
LISTEN TO “CAUSING TROUBLE AGAIN”
WATCH “CAUSING TROUBLE AGAIN” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
PRE-ORDER / PRE-SAVE TROUBLE
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). 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 The 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). For complete details and ticket information, please see https://ginabirchmusic.com/#live.
GINA BIRCH - NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2025
(All Dates w/ Miki Berenyi Trio)
JULY
16 - London, UK - Rough Trade East In-Store
OCTOBER
10 – Washington, DC – Pearl Street Warehouse
11 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
12 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
13 – Montreal, QC – Bar Le Ritz PDB
15 – Toronto, ON – The Great Hall
16 – Ferndale, MI – The Magic Bag
17 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
18 – St. Paul, MN – Turf Club
20 – Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge
21 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge
23 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre
24 – Vancouver, BC – Hollywood Theatre
25 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
27 – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
28 – West Hollywood, CA – The Roxy Theatre
Known for a wildly diverse artistic career that includes co-founding the iconic British post-punk band, The Raincoats, Gina Birch had an undeniable and outspoken hand in shaping the UK’s independent music scene. Trouble 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.
The album 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.”
PRAISE FOR GINA BIRCH + I PLAY MY BASS LOUD
“A celebration of Birch’s status as a godmother of feminist rock and a furious protest against the persecution of women…a welcome reminder of how art can change individual lives, if not the world.”
– PITCHFORK
“Birch sings, writes and plays bass like someone who cannot help but be herself, and her distinct, sometimes contradictory personality oozes out of every track. She’s silly but also dead serious; she can be self-deprecating in one breath and thrillingly self-assured the next. Her solo songs likewise represent a tonal and thematic hodgepodge.”
– THE NEW YORK TIMES
“I Play My Bass Loud is a combination of witty feminist manifesto and a celebration of the bass guitar – through alt-rock, dub and distorted rhythm – as a ‘creative and phenomenal instrument’…There’s something about this mix of scrawling guitars, frank lyricism and brazen dub that is a joyfully empowering inversion of the girl group sound.”
– MOJO (****)
“As its title suggests, I Play My Bass Loud is a resolute assertion of self, doubling as a wider exploration of identity. It carries the same maverick imprint as everything Birch has previously put her name to, making for songs that feel deeply personal and often disarmingly candid: mouthy, vulnerable, wrathful, funny and plenty more besides.”
– UNCUT (****)
“Using voice-overs and chants, Birch narrates her songs with agitpop directness, but also humour and insight. Like her bass guitar, the messaging rings out loud and clear.”
– FINANCIAL TIMES (****)
“A work made up of thrilling new songs as well as several older compositions mined from (Birch’s) extensive musical vaults…full of feminist anthems that explore women’s experiences in a patriarchal society.”
– THE QUIETUS
“For Raincoats fans this is the most similar to their underrated third album Moving, for its fluent, danceable, off-kilter rhythms. For everyone else it's a marvel waiting to be discovered.”
– CLASSIC ROCK
“Play My Bass Loud, the debut solo record by film-maker, painter and punk musician Gina Birch, is an album of manifestos. The title track is a Walk on the Wild Side-esque ode to taking up space with an instrument usually seen as auxiliary. There are songs raging against injustice and about proudly branding yourself a feminist.”
– THE GUARDIAN
GINA BIRCH
TROUBLE
(Third Man Records)
Release Date: Friday, July 11, 2025
Painting by Gina Birch
Tracklist:
I Thought I'd Live Forever
Happiness
Causing Trouble Again
Cello Song
Keep To The Left
Doom Monger
Don’t Fight Your Friends
Nothing Will Ever Change That
Hey Hey
Train Platform
Sleep (Digital-Only Bonus Track)
CONNECT WITH GINA BIRCH
