Gina Birch: I Play My Bass Loud album review — a feminist musical manifesto
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Gina Birch is the co-founder of The Raincoats, the London post-punk band named after the most dispiritingly functional item in the British wardrobe. Over the course of three albums released between 1979 and 1984, they gained a cult following for their discordant but mesmerising music, a DIY assemblage of idiosyncratic building materials: The Velvet Underground, outsider folk, dub reggae, funk, even prog rock. Birch learnt to play bass on the job, having acquired her first instrument two weeks before their first show.
Like grabbing a raincoat before going out, this improvisational ethos was the product of circumstance as well as choice. Inspired by The Slits, Birch and her Raincoats co-leader Ana da Silva were women making their way in a male-dominated sphere. In the 1990s, they were adopted as figureheads by the riot grrrl scene of feminist alt-rockers in the US. They remain a key reference point for a current generation of punk bands such as Big Joanie.
A free-spirited character who also works as a visual artist and filmmaker, Birch has waited until her late sixties to release her first solo album. She wears her elder stateswoman role lightly on the title track of I Play My Bass Loud, a breezily funky manifesto about the liberating power of a loud bassline. The liberation is feminist: four other female bassists appear alongside Birch. “Pussy Riot” pays tribute to the dissident Russian women of the world’s most famous contemporary punk band. “I Will Never Wear Stilettos” advocates the use of functional footwear as a response to male violence. “Sometimes you’ve just got to run,” she chants in a numbed singsong voice.
Produced by Martin “Youth” Glover, the album provides a pleasingly solid updating of The Raincoats’ pick-and-mix style. Several tracks have a dubby electronic sound pitched between The Slits and The Orb. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore plays guitar on “Wish I Was You”, a squally 1990s alt-rock throwback with lyrics about a competitive female friendship, seemingly inspired by Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. 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.
★★★★☆
‘I Play My Bass Loud’ is released by Third Man Records
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