Gina Birch is back on the scene with a blistering new album Trouble coming on the 11th July. Following on from her excellent debut solo album I Play My Bass Loud her theme remains the same. Just like her art and beliefs it’s and odd yet exhilarating listen which is what Gina was always about with The Raincoats. Sometimes uneasy listening in the past yet always capturing the minds of the likes of the great Kurt Cobain for instance, Gina has fun experimenting with so many sounds on this new one it’s hard to fit into one genre. I’ve pinned her down to send me her top ten influential albums and it’s as eclectic as her pinball mind. Read on…
“All the ideas expressed in this article are my own conjecture”. Gina Birch.
Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks
I just love Bob Dylans lyrics. When listening this album, I feel like I am a teenager in the mid 70s yearning for a love I may have left in Marrakesh I’ve been beguiled or I’ve beguiled someone. It’s all very evocative I’m remembering hitchhiking… lovelorn…one relationship melding into the next. Maybe tangled up in one heart ache after another. He articulates love and heartbreak so eloquently. He is casual, he is broken, he is cruel, he is off again And everything seems to be a simple twist of fate… life for me, art school, the raincoats, love, living all the things of my life have never been planned. Its all a simple twist….I’ve been hit by a few freight trains. Dropped a coin into a cup of a blindman at the gate Light pours through a beat up shade…. It’s a painting…. Its so visual.
George Colman: Bongo Joe
The character comes across as idiosyncratic, intimate and wise. It feels like he is forever sticking up for the underdog and identifying and enjoying it, not looking down, but finding quality in these things and people. There is humour And no messin’ Oil drums, chair legs, percussion, he percusses on them all at quite a pace along with whistling, singing and incanting… The lyrics are both loving and philosophical.
“You better cool it and do it right
(Cool it don’t try to fool it….)
Cool it and try to do it right…
Cool it and do it right
Or you’ll end up in a fight”.
A motto I say to myself…. (Ref my new song..Don’t fight your friends!). It’s like the inside of his head, or it could be mine, innocent little doggie……. I first heard this record when I was living in the squat in Monmouth Road. Next door, Richard Dudanski had the best record collection. We all used to gather in his and Espe’s basement and dance and listen to music and smoke em up.
Arthur Russell: Another Thought
I think this is one of his least acclaimed set of recordings but the one I’ve listened to the most and enjoyed the most. It was put together two years after he died…. I think he would be extremely happy with it. The way the solo cello and the solo vocals seem to speak to each other, back and forth, is so beautiful. As a bass player myself, who sometimes finds it hard to sing and play at the same time, it’s inspiring… see if you can spot me doing this, on the record after next!!! It has an eccentric quality and it is very easy, melodic and engaging. The lyrics are melancholic, moody and evocative It feels like AR is just singing to me, or telling me what’s going on in his life sung softly into my ear, with a such warm and tender vocal As the album progresses, more sounds enter the mix, turning the songs into more danceable fair and I say to him, ‘shall we dance?’ When he sings he’s ‘A little lost without you’ that feels like it is most likely an understatement I’m so busy thinking about kissing you”. OK.
Sparklehorse: Vivadixisunmarine
I want my records back. I am obviously enjoying intimate vocals. Ones that are spoken close to the microphone, that are just meant for your ear and not to travel like a yodel across the mountain range. I do love a yodel too but I am a woman of extremes and I like both ends of the spectrum. On the documentary I watched, about him, it was when Mark Linkous was sitting on his sofa after everyone else had gone to bed, he sang softly and quietly into the mic…not wanting to disturb, not wanting to be overheard, and it was then he discovered this voice, the intimate sorrow. Obviously I do love the line ‘I want my records back’….. after a break up…. It’s such a needy vocal line. And in it, I hear all the heartbreak in the world.
Can: The Epic Soundtracks Compilation
I play Can as often a possible. Epic Soundtracks made me a mix tape and gave it to me before we headed off on our first Raincoats, Kleenex Spizz Energy tour. I played it in the van, relentlessly, and it saved my life. It had tracks from several albums but to me, it is an album this way. Songs, Vitamin C… I mean it’s what we all need innit, Yo Do Right, Moonshine, Mushroom, Spoon, Mary Mary… yesssss!
IQU: Chottomatte A MOMENT
I love this record. Mad fast drums and furious paced double bass. Shouted vocals, theremin
Speeded up vocals, sophisticated Boom Boom, with a touch of crazy bubblegum. I saw them in Minneapolis after I had been poisoned by the chef for sending back my chips, as they were crisps, after I had played a Hangovers show in or around 2000. I had terrible food poisoning as I watched them, but it’s still one of my all time favourite ever gigs…. Some random inserts. A deep voice says …‘Its been a hard days night’, goes into ‘swan lake’ and then a beautiful slow double bass. Then the theremin comes in, its transforming… its rips my heart out….
Melanie: Candles in the Rain
I love the quality of Melanies voice so much. The lyrics are not always to my taste but the sound is so beautiful if I just listen to the vowel and consenants, they just fire with emotion. And I’m right there. She needed a choir for Lay Down and knew there was a choir in a nearby church. She and her engineer went to visit to ask the choir master if the choir would sing, with her. He promptly refused, but one of the choir saId, let’s hear her sing…. So she sang and they loved her so much they all started to join in and lo and behold there they are on the record. Lay Down (candles in the rain) with the Edwin Hawkins singers.
PJ Harvey: To Bring You My Love
PJ Harvey and Flood. I love the simplicity of this record, it’s fucked up and simple and complicated and brilliant. Heavy over peaking vocals, the guitar then rises up to meet the vocals. Then it all falls away, into a tuneful guitar and a keyboard enters one sustained note then two. The story goes, when the record was finished, both PJ and Flood preferred the demos so they began again. Referencing the demos and keeping the soul. Brilliant and brave. Mind you I think Eno is right to make a good record, you need limited budget and limited time.
Patti Smith: Horses
It’s a lesson in making poetry and drama into songs in the best way possible… Oh… do I write an essay or just say, this is a life changing record. It is a lesson in how to live passionately, dreaming, loving, creating and breaking boundaries. Patti’s soft but urgent voice incanting her poetry and then her fierce voice singing are an amazing contrast and sometimes the words get faster and faster and take you with them until you are locked into a fierce piece of music. It is miraculous, it feels like it has always existed. Ana da Silva was having a party and before the party began I sat with my head in the speaker and listened to Horses properly for the first time It was the most tremendous eye opening adventure and continues to be so.
Public Image: Public Image
John Lydon proves he is a master of words, either written somewhere or stored in his head, that seemingly pour out in the studio as he stands in front of the microphone. He is normally right on the money. He gathers great musicians around him, for this first PiL album, Jah Wobble and Keith Levine and they take us to places. Somewhere we all were really struck by. After all the Sex Pistols craziness, something beautiful and creative was born. Public Image is a great track, lyrics written when the Sex Pistols still existed. The other tracks on the album all have great stories and impromptu brilliance and chaos.
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Forewords by Wayne Carey, Reviews Editor for Louder Than War. His author profile is here
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