[ image 154-birch-hero-vert type=center ]Along with Ana da Silva, Gina Birch led The Raincoats from 1977 to 1984 in England, reforming in 1993, and still collaborating to this day. Their unique approach to music inspired many, including Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who instigated their '90s' regrouping. Gina has remained busy, directing many music videos and painting, but music and creating new songs has remained a constant in her life. Her first solo album, I Play My Bass Loud, was just released, and was produced by Youth, also interviewed for this issue.
I interviewed Youth recently about working with you. When did this collaboration start to take off for your first solo album?
The first time we met and properly talked, he was with Vivien Goldman. He was making a record [Next is Now] with her. She and I were going to be playing some songs for Idler magazine. It's a particularly English magazine about how not to put all your effort into working for the man. It's an interesting philosophy. We met at [an] Idler party, and I was doing some songs on my own with some parts I'd recorded playing my guitar and singing. Youth was very taken with it. At that particular time, I had tracks with my electronic parts on them, but I think he was much more aware of me playing guitar, singing, and emoting. He said it was one of the best live gigs he'd seen. He invited me to his [Space Mountain] Festival in Spain that summer. The thing with Third Man Records when they were opening the London shop and label, David Buick [of Third Man, Tape Op #127] had asked The Raincoats if we'd like to make a 7-inch. Ana said, "No." I said I would, because I'd had "Feminist Song" for about 10 or 15 years, and I wanted to record it. I'd recorded it at home. Ana was playing her [Korg] Monotron [Synthesizer] on it. I put some more tracks on it, sent it to Youth with the parts, and he did a dub mix for the B-side and put a bit of drums and parts on. That was fruitful. He was in Spain, and I was in London. Then, David Buick came over for the opening of the shop. We had dinner, and we got on well. We decided it would be nice to try and make an album. We thought, "Well, we'll do a few tracks with Youth and see what it's like." I went down to see Youth three or four times. I took my guitar, and he was like, "Wow, you brought your guitar!" I thought we might play. We just talked three or four times about everything but music. I always had my little electronic songs from over the years. He said, "Well, I don't really want to do your electronic songs. I want to make a record with you, and your guitar and the emotion." I said, "I want to do these electronic songs." I don't know if you know The Hangovers record [Slow Dirty Tears] that I made?
No, I haven't heard that yet.
In a way, that was my first solo project, but I got lots of other musicians in. When you get a band with lots of musicians, it's weird to use your own name. I called it The Hangovers. In fact, when I was rehearsing the other day with two people, they said, "What's the name of the band?" I thought, "It's Gina Birch, actually." It feels weird!
Yeah, I know what you mean.
So, I went down to Youth's, and we decided we'd give it a crack. It was great. Right from the start, we flew. Youth is very inspiring, and he's quite mellow. I'm a bit more, "Ahhhh! Why aren't we starting on time?" He's like, "Mmm, [makes toking sound]," smoking over there. We complemented each other, in a way. Eventually, he said, "Yes, I do like your electronic songs. Let's do them." I think he knew I wasn't going to give up on that! In the meantime, I had written "I Am Rage." I'd written a middle eight, because I knew he liked a middle eight. Then he asked, "Which is the chorus?" I said, "Oh, I don't know!" He put a little pre-chorus in and said, "Have you got some words?" I said, "Oh, I've got this bit. 'Please don't ask me to be reasonable! I'm not listening.'" Then we just did it that morning. The first vocal I did whilst we were structuring the song is what's on the record. I was standing in the middle of the room; it wasn't like a control room and glass. It was just us, all in a room. I liked that, actually. In typical recording, I can see them in the control room behind the glass, and they're all [making laughing faces].
Yeah, they're always laughing, and I feel like, "They're laughing at my vocal take, right?"
Yeah, they're laughing at me, or something! It's nice being in the room. Always being part of the conversation is important to me. There were a few where it was more guitar, and then a lot of the electronic ones, like "I Play My Bass Loud," "I Will Never Wear Stilettos," "Digging Down." Those ones were quite formed when I went in. We put some more bits of guitar on and such.
What are you using at home to record?
I have an ancient, big old [Apple] Mac tower. It's probably about 20 years old. I have [Apple's] Final Cut Pro 7 and Logic 9. I use Logic Pro 9. I've got a microphone and I put it in front of a funny little practice amp. It's a bit of a mess! I use loops from Logic; I filter and distort them. I use the different vocal effects to make my voice go weird. I just like playing around, having fun, and amusing myself. I have phases where I'm a bit addicted to it. Then I go off to my painting studio and I get addicted to that, then I come back. Some of the songs have been there for a while, but I'll switch on the machine and think, "Oh, I'll have a look at this song." I start talking to the song. I'll put in another phrase; or I've been calling it a "Greek chorus," recently. I don't know if that's really true, but it's like I'm commenting on the song, [or] what's happening in the song. I'll suddenly comment on it. Or I'll find a little sound somewhere, and I'll think, "Ooh, I wonder if this sound will be good in that song?" I have a little tiny keyboard, and I play some of the bass lines on the keyboard. I love the thing that changes the pitch.
Oh, the pitch wheel?
The pitch bender. I love playing with all that, and I have fun. I thought the songs would probably stay in the cupboard. I never thought I'd make an album. It's been such a pleasure that they've turned into this. I've got a load more that are still in there. The ones that are on this record work together. I did a lot of "moment-specific" ones, like when someone got murdered or when the banking crisis happened. I did a great epic about Occupy and the banking crisis. I've got one about lockdown, obviously, but I didn't want to put that on. I figured everybody's going to have a bloody lockdown song. At some point I'll make a "moments in time" album.
This album feels like a reaction to the world, with your views on feminism and explaining how you feel about being in this world.
Yeah, there is that. It's a theme, in fact, but not specifically. Just moments. At one point in "…Rage," I'd had lyrics about Afghanistan, and Youth was like, "Look, let's make it more broad." I thought, "Well, that's probably true because live, if I want to, I can rant about anything!" On the record, it is what it is.
There's always going to be something to rage about, right?
Yeah. So that's good.
When you were making records in The Raincoats and other projects, were you paying a lot of attention to the studio process?
When we made our first records, the desks weren't automated. We'd all be "hands on the faders." That was a bit of a crazy time. All we knew was, "This fader makes it go louder," or, "Less reverb," or, "More reverb." That was a straightforward thing. With bands, you have enough to worry about getting on with the rest of them and what you're going to have for lunch!
You did your first Raincoats record [The Raincoats] with Mayo Thompson [Tape Op #16] producing. That was obviously through Rough Trade Records, right?
Yeah. He produced our first 7-inch that had "In Love," "Fairytale [in the Supermarket]," and "Adventures [Close to Home]," and then we went on tour. We played for 28 dates in a row around the UK with Kleenex [aka LiLiPUT] and Spizzenergi. When we came back, we recorded the record really fast, practically live. Mayo was always pushing us to be as out there as we could be. We were into that. I always got on well with Mayo. Obviously, I've been in [his group] Red Krayola enough over the years. He's always had an interesting take, musically.
Was it easy to jump into Logic from using Final Cut for video editing?
You're right, the technology, for me, came with film and video. First it was [Sony] U-matics, and I could do all of the editing offline. I got very good at all that. Then it became Final Cut, so I became a one-woman band video-maker. I could do everything. It was quite easy to transfer over to Logic. I'm trying to get into Logic Pro 10, but my big machine is dying. I can't open up Logic 9 or Final Cut 7, because the technology now is way beyond that.
I love the story of Youth adding the pre-chorus to your song. With having an editor for your songwriting, are you envisioning new ways of putting the next batch of songs together?
No, not in a way. With The Raincoats, we never wanted to be verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, middle-eight. We studiously tried to avoid that forever. If I wanted to learn how to do that I could have. It wasn't something I ever thought I wanted to do. It was interesting working with Youth, because he would say, "I think this would be good." Usually, he was right. It was good to put in a few pre-choruses. It has made it more poppy or accessible in that way. I might have put some backwards guitar and a dropout and made it more anarchic. When I was doing the song "Let's Go Crazy," the bass line goes all over the place. He's like, "I think a bass should be simple." I was like, "No! This bass is not simple. This bass goes on a journey." We educated each other a little bit. He would say, "Try this," and I'd say yes or no. I think we gave each other credit where it was due. I was quite opinionated and quite strong, because I knew the technology. I wasn't sitting on the sofa. If something occurred that I didn't like, I'd go up and say, "You know that track there? It's got such and such on it, and I know because I put it there." A lot of my files were there. I'd taken them from Logic 9 and transferred them into Logic 10. Michael [Rendall, engineer] might say, "Oh, do a harmony here." I'd say, "Oh, I'm not good at harmonies." I'm a little bit of a lemming when it comes to a tune. I keep going to the obvious notes. Michael would push me to the right harmonies. I love Youth's singing too. He sings on "Dance Like A Demon" on that psychedelic-y bit, and I love his voice.
How did the mixing process work?
I asked Michael, the engineer, "How do you do this? He said, "I've worked with Youth for 15 or 20 years. I know what Youth wants." He does a lot of it, and then Youth will come in. Sometimes he'll leave, come back, and then say, "How about this?" Sometimes we need fresh ears. If you're sitting in the room forever, you slowly become acclimatized to this. Youth would cleverly leave and then come back and say, "Why is that bit gone? That was really good." He was the final taste there. He was quite chill on the record, although he was doing a lot. But he wasn't imposing. He was gently bringing it all together. He's a lovely person.
You both come from a similar era in UK music, and you both have played bass. A lot of shared experiences.
Yeah, I think so. Youth has worked with Poly Styrene [X-Ray Spex], Vivien Goldman, Brix Smith [The Fall], and a little with Lora Logic [X-Ray Spex, Essential Logic]. He ticked us all off. "Youth, what's going on here? What is this army you're gathering?"
The ladies club.
The ladies club, yeah! I think he's been mostly doing boy bands since then!
I've been listening to The Raincoats since the '80s. Your music was an inspiration to me and my friends. We thought, "That's the kind of music that we can make. We don't have to make standard music!"
Particularly in our earlier days, Ana was a bit older, and she was keen that we all contributed songs. She wanted us to be like The Beatles, where each person has a personality and represents themselves with their ideas and their songs. She's deep, poetic, and Portuguese, and I'm more frothy, funny, and tragic. Vicky [Aspinall, violin] was very political, and Palmolive [Paloma McLardy] had her García Lorca thing going on. That first album really sings with that. The second album [Odyshape] got a bit weirder and more interesting as we began to find our "weird" feet.
That record's really wild. I love it.
Yeah. I think Odyshape's great. We had some interesting times. By the third record [Moving], we were kind of falling apart, and we were falling a bit more into normality, somehow.
Was it interesting to get back together in the '90s and restart the band?
It was, because we started to hear about Riot grrrl, and that was so inspiring to us. Obviously, the Kurt [Cobain] support was important, but there were these young women who were starting 'zines about feminism and standing on stage – like Kathleen Hanna [Bikini Kill] shouting about wages and sexual assault – and that, for us, was like, "Wow! That's so brilliant." They held a mirror back up to us in a way, and they said, "Thank you," and we said, "Thank you" to them. That was thrilling. When we were first doing this, we didn't know if anybody would be that interested in it or listen to us. I certainly wasn't used to being listened to. No one wanted my opinion on anything growing up! When we started to play again, we'd find that we might have sometimes three generations of women; the grandmother, the mother, and the daughter. You can't take away the amazingness of that.
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