Gina Birch - I Play My Bass Loud

As one-half of the Raincoats’ core duo since 1977, Gina Birch is a punk icon with a pop sensibility, an art-schooled adventurer who has painted, filmed, and performed by her own rules for over 45 years—using her visual art to tell stories, charging raw recordings with concepts. Her history converges onto her first solo album, I Play My Bass Loud, its title evoking her singular approach to her instrument as well as an ethos. She won’t hang back, or play a supporting role. She is now taking centre stage.

In September of 2021, Gina released her first ever solo single, Feminist Song, on Third Man Records in celebration of the opening of their brand new London location. In February of 2023, Third Man release Gina’s brand new and first ever solo full length album, I Play My Bass Loud, recorded by Martin “Youth” Glover from Killing Joke and featuring Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth.

The songs of I Play My Bass Loudwere largely finished before Birch brought them to co-producer Youth, of Killing Joke, who has developed an impressive pedigree collaborating with legendary punk women like Poly Styrene and Viv Albertine, and brought in things like middle eights and choruses. But there were also some moments of spontaneity in assembling a handful of tracks from almost-scratch. In the studio, Birch and Youth built “I Am Rage” into a pop song from its beginning as “a whispered poem.” Together, they wrote a bonafide alt-rock anthem, “Wish I Was You,” and its preceding tone poem, “And Then It Happened,” which Birch called “a letter to myself.” The pair of songs collectively narrate a shift in perception—a woman stepping ever-further into her power and thriving—propelled by a much-deserved wind. Birch said “Wish I Was You” was a joke at first—“I used to wish I was you,” she sings, “But now you wish you were me”—though she also admits, “in every joke, there’s some truth.”