The Raincoats’ Gina Birch has announced her second solo album, Trouble. The follow-up to 2023’s I Play My Bass Loud comes out July 11 via Third Man. Like its predecessor, it was produced by Youth of Killing Joke. Its lead single, ‘Causing Trouble Again’, was inspired by 2024’s Women in Revolt, an exhibition of feminist art and activism at Tate Britain that included Birch’s 1977 short film 3 Minute Scream. The rambunctious post-punk epic features several female artists recording themselves saying the names of women who have inspired them. Check it out below.
The music video for ‘Causing Trouble Again’, directed by Dean Chalkley, features Birch’s Raincoats’ bandmate Ana da Silva, as well as Lora Logic (X-Ray Spex, Essential Logic), Amy Rigby, Neo Naturists co-founder Christine Binnie, painter Daisy Parris, artist Georgina Starr, writer Jill Westwood, artist and activist Bobby Baker, costume designer Annie Symons, photographer Shirley O’Loughlin, and more.
“For the ‘Causing Trouble Again’ video, after hearing Bob Dylan sing about a white ladder all covered with water, I became obsessed with white ladders,” Gina Birch commented. “I decided to use five white ladders, three with seven rungs…I realized later that this references Jacob’s Ladder and a connection from Earth to heaven, but I think I was thinking of ladders as a symbol of getting on, getting up. I wanted to have a choreographed movement with four of us with these ladders. How do we move with ladders? Do we move together, do we fight, do we dance?
“I also wanted to reference the wind scene from the film, The Colour of Pomegranates, and to include as many artist women from the Women in Revolt exhibition as I could. I wanted them to be troublesome, or just to shout ‘Causing trouble!’ I ended up inviting all the artist musician women I knew who could make the shoot, and it was a fantastic meeting of great women, many of whom had never met each other before.”
Trouble Cover Artwork:
Trouble Tracklist:
1. I Thought I’d Live Forever
2. Happiness
3. Causing Trouble Again
4. Cello Song
5. Keep To The Left
6. Doom Monger
7. Don’t Fight Your Friends
8. Nothing Will Ever Change That
9. Hey Hey
10. Train Platform
11. Sleep (Digital-Only Bonus Track)
