ROCK’N’ROLL
CONFIDENTIAL
GINA BIRCH
The Raincoat and feminist punk paragon talks solo expression, Year Zero ’77 and superfan Kurt Cobain.
Here comes
Trouble
: Raincoat Gina Birch – “I’m an obsessive, I love making things.”
“I ANALYSE MY troubles in my art,” says Gina Birch as she breaks out the tea and biscuits in the kitchen
Dean Chalkley of her north London home, “and live my life happily.” MOJO’s here to talk about her new, lively, Youth-produced album Trouble, which like 2023’s solo debut I Play My Bass Loud is released on Jack White’s Third Man label. It’s the latest in the slim but rewarding discography she began as singer/bassist with punk trailblazers The Raincoats in 1979, though her artistic output also extends into painting and filmmaking – her 1977 film 3 Minute Scream made her the face of Tate Britain’s 2024 feminist exhibit Women In Revolt! – and so it continues. “I’m an obsessive,” she says cheerily. “I love making things, and I can climb over the biggest mess to get to what I’m trying to do.”