Gina Birch’s mom is 96 years old, and she goes to see her every week. Just the other day, she visited with her younger daughter, who asked Birch –  The Raincoats co-founder, artist, and feminist rock icon – if she had heard the new Lorde album. When she would drive home from seeing her mom, Birch used to pass by a Chinese restaurant with a red sign that said, in gold letters, “Happiness.” The sign looked ruined, but one day she was disappointed to find it replaced with something “like Big Eats, or Yummy Tummy.” That was the inspiration for ‘Happiness’, the second song on her second solo album, Trouble, which follows 2023’s I Play My Bass Loud. That track and ‘I Thought I’d Live Forever’ open the album – which finds Birch reuniting with Killing Joke’s Youth as producer – in a probing, introspective place, but their quiet defiance immediately feeds into ‘Causing Trouble Again’, its communal, rambunctious lead single. Birch’s diaristic sense of humour and playfulness keeps shining through even in Trouble’s darkest moments, its punk spirit infused with dub and electronic experimentation. “Today I choose to be happy,” she intones on the absurdly uplifting ‘Doom Monger’, anything but oblivious to the destruction around her. It’s not a loud declaration; if anything, it’s rather faint, even as she repeats the final word. But if nothing can take its place, that’s a good sign.

We caught up with Gina Birch to talk about Kim Gordon, painting, Bella Freud’s fashion podcast, and other inspirations behind Trouble.

Women in Revolt! Exhibition at Tate Britain

I got into painting, and suddenly I was working with Third Man on I Play My Bass Loud. Lindsay Young asked if she could show this film I made in 1977 that had never been actually shown before; I never showed it when I was at art school. I really didn’t quite know what I’d done, but I showed little bits of it, and this curator, Joe Scotland from Studio Voltaire, had seen some of it at a Raincoats show and told the other curator about it. So Lindsay Young approached me and asked me if she could see the three-minute scream film, and I showed it to her and she said, “Oh yes, I love it.” And then she kept asking for a different resolution, and I kept saying, “Look, if you’re showing it on a little monitor in the corner of the gallery, it’s fine.” And she said, “No, I want to project it at two-and-a-half, three meters wide.” I was like, “Oh my god. That’s incredible.” And then the next email I got was, “Can we use a shot of it for the poster?” So, not only had I made an album unexpectedly for Third Man, I was suddenly this great big image on the front of a favorite art gallery of mine. [laughs] It was incredible.

Lindsay chose a lot of artists who were largely unknown. Some were known, like Linda Sterling who did the Buzzcocks cover, and Caroline Coon a little bit, the Neo Naturists. But a lot of the artists hadn’t really been shown hardly ever, so it was a really special thing. But when the exhibition opened, we didn’t really get to know each other because we’d all brought our friends. I tried to build some kind of community between us, but it was quite difficult because we were all very spread out. Some of the women were getting quite elderly by then, and  you know, didn’t really want to engage much with me on the phone. Anyway, I decided that I would try and make a piece of work where I would get all the women from Women in Revolt to give me a few names of women who’d inspired them, and then I’d make a kind of mountain of inspirational women. And then I thought it should be in a song too, so these things were running in parallel.

I went about contacting Lindsay; I didn’t directly contact the women because people’s privacy seems to be very important these days. I found that a little frustrating. So, indirectly I contacted all the women and most of them either didn’t get the email or found it too difficult or thought, “I’ll do it later,” you know, one of those things. Time passed, and I then invited artist friends of mine and other people to give me names like Anna da Silva and all sorts of people, musicians and artists. When it came to making the video, I chose a whole lot of other women because I had to choose women who were in London, who could get to this film studio, and it was a bit out of town. So there’s so many layers of different women there. It’s not a very exciting story, but it was quite an exciting journey, actually. I suppose you find this when you’re trying to track down people to interview – sometimes it takes a lot of emails back and forth. Managing to contact and get 30 women to come to the film studio – I felt quite proud of myself.

Painting

You said you’ve been taking painting very seriously over the past decade, and I’m curious what that investment looks like for you.

Prior to this major work with I Play My Bass Loud and then a period after, I was in my studio all the time. I haven’t managed to get there very much in the last kind of six months, so I’m feeling a bit abandoned by it – or I’ve abandoned it. But as soon as I’ve done my show on the 16th, I’m going to be back in my painting studio, bringing everything back to life, giving it some love and care. It’s been such a lovely journey, and I’ve felt so inspired by painting. I’ve felt so inspired by just a canvas that you can tell a story on without perspective, without hierarchy. Anything could appear there. It’s not like a film. You can make the painting on your own, and the story that you tell within it can be many-layered. It’s a beautiful thing. I love putting different ideas within the canvas.

It’s been a very exciting rediscovery because I was painting when I was at school, but I’ve not painted since. I didn’t paint when I was at art school. I made films and did crazy performance stuff and did everything else but painting. So coming back to painting as I got older, I just fell in love with it again. I think when I was at school, it was just one of the things I liked best doing – that and maths, actually. But when I rediscovered it when I was older, it just felt really important to me.

What’s the story behind the painting on Trouble’s cover?

It’s a brutal story, really. It’s been through many incarnations, that painting. There’s probably about 20 paintings underneath because that’s just a small corner of the painting. It was a story of, I suppose, things that happen to young women at parties; maybe with drinks that are spiked or just drinking too much. It’s not a nice story, but I just really liked the Dega quality of it, the red in the red, and not seeing the whole story. I did at one point think I would use the whole painting for the cover, but it’s too brutal.

I hear that redness, that brutality and blurring of the body, evoked in ‘Cello Song’.

It was written as I was painting, not that particular painting, but it was written as I was painting. The thing is when you’re painting, people appear and disappear and and lines appear and disappear, and paint drips, and it just feels very evocative of life and fame and fading, so many people who move up and then fall down suddenly, who are full of joy and despair. I can’t really articulate it right now.  [laughs] I think you’re too serious and deep for me right at this minute. I’m like, “Oh my god, I think I need to do this in the morning.”

Bob Dylan

I know that the ‘Causing Trouble Again’ video was inspired by ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ and that line, “a white ladder all covered with water.” I’m fascinated by how inspiration sometimes works by way of singling out a single detail that your mind obsesses over – it’s not even the song that’s necessarily inspirational, but this one thing.

I know – not even covered with water. [laughs] I just became obsessed with white ladders. I had this idea of a kind of choreography with ladders. We never quite got there, but there’s some interesting things that happen. I’ve got lots of different footage of us with ladders and projections of me with ladders. In the actual edit of the film, I didn’t put much of that in, but when we play live, I’m going to use quite a bit of that for the projections behind us.

The obsession is odd. I mean, I am quite obsessed with listening to Bob Dylan of all phases, and I don’t know why that one white ladder thing just stuck in my head. I couldn’t get rid of it. And then I kept thinking about snakes and ladders ascending; I suppose it was a little to do with claiming your power a little bit. But then, of course, it’s the journey from Earth to paradise as well, Jacob’s ladder and all that. It’s funny how so many things, if you obsess over them, the references are quite numerous. When I was getting obsessed, I didn’t know why. And then a bit later, I’m like, “Oh, that’s interesting.”

Were any of the recent films centered around Bob Dylan fresh in your mind?

The most recent one came out after I’d finished the record, and I loved it so much. I felt it really captured the spirit. I mean, obviously, it’s not a perfect rendition of what happened, and the representation of the women isn’t as brilliant as it could have been. There were flaws in it, but I just love being in that world. I love him visiting Woody Guthrie and all those things. For me, one of the things is trying to be a bit more adventurous with lyrics, because I can be a bit on the nose. [laughs] The more I listen to Bob Dylan, his lyrics are so funny and heartfelt and sometimes deep and obscure and strange. And in that way, they’re kind of liberating, but I haven’t found my liberation with them yet. Maybe a tiny bit in ‘Cello Song’. I tend to write more logically, and I’d like to get away from that.

Kim Gordon

She was obviously an early supporter of your work, but what’s interesting to me is that she released her first solo album in 2019 and then worked with the same producer on its follow- up, like you did. 

She’s definitely a fellow traveler, but I feel like she’s a notch up there. I feel much more homey, and she feels very sophisticated. I know she likes my painting, and I know she likes what I do. But I really admire what she does in terms of just her intellect, really. She is a great thinker, and I’m probably a bit more of a feeler. [laughs] She has this capacity for analysis and thought and digging into things and exploring the ideas in them in a way that I definitely couldn’t do. She’s the other half of what I’d like to be. She’s got a really analytical, clever, witty side to her that I find unreachable. I know she’s been through really tough times with her marriage splitting up, but she’s really thrown herself into her work in a way that is so powerful.

And then the video that she made for ‘I’m a Man’ – that’s so funny and so clever. It’s unexpected and intense and brilliant. She’s written quite a lot about masculinity and rock, and that’s something that would never have occurred to me to try and write anything about.

Sonically, too, I was wondering if The Collective was an influence on songs like ‘Don’t Fight Your Friends’.

I shouldn’t really tell you this, but when I first met up with Youh again, I said, “Have you heard the Kim Gordon album?” And then he listened to it and he started playing me all these tracks. They weren’t like Kim Gordon at all, but then he played me this one track that was like, “I really like that. That’s beautiful.” I had a song piece, and we slowed it right down and fitted it in. It was finding the common ground between me and Youth with a Kim Gordon diversion on the way. I have to say it was slightly inspired, but when I said to Youth, “Have you heard of Kim Gordon?” I wasn’t meaning, “Shall we recreate Kim Gordon?” We were just chatting about things we’d heard. So then I think he felt obliged to explore that more than I had anticipated. [laughs] I was like, “You don’t have to do that, I’ve got these songs.” Because all the other songs I took with me to Youth’s studio, but that one I just took a vocal melody, so we were looking for a way to fit that with some backing. And then he came up with this piece.

When we play live, we’re not doing it like that. We’re using the drum track and bass all the way through and me, Jenny, and Marie are all singing. It’s like a call-and-response thing, and then we all sing the chorus. What we’re working on right now is translating the work into a live context, which is really interesting because the album was largely written either on my computer at home or in the studio at Youth’s.

Mad Men 

My dad was absolutely lovely, but he was expected to be the patriarch and the breadwinner and the one in charge – the buck stopped with him. My mum kind of let him be that, and she always cared about her appearance and her skin and whether her clothes were right. She was very clever, but she never explored that side of herself. And then you think about Betty Draper and how she kind of gave up everything for this marriage and how trapped and sad it is. It does feel like whenever we go to the Draper household, I maybe project my own sadness onto her from my childhood. I know when I would get home from school, my mum would be kind of depressed and unfulfilled. Women at that time had very few choices. For me, the history of women’s – emancipation, I suppose, is a word that can be used – runs through madmen. In a way, the stories of the women are very interesting. The stories of the men are a bit more blah.

Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis podcast

There’s even one where Cate Blanchett talks about portraying Bob Dylan. 

That’s hilarious because she says that when she was playing Bob Dylan, she was wondering about her physicality and her stance. A friend of hers said, “Try putting a sock down the front of your trousers.” And she said it worked wonders. It just gave her a kind of sense of having a masculine moment. I remember once when I was playing a gig in Brighton and I went and got a tattoo transfer – it was only a transfer, and it was on my arm and I had bare arms when I was playing. And it made me feel really strong. [laughs] I know it sounds crazy, but just the idea of having a tattoo – I know now everyone has lots of tattoos, but at the time, tattoos were a lot rarer, and it was incredible the effect psychologically that this tattoo transfer had on my psyche. And I expect a pair of socks down the trouser – or a sock, not a pair, that might be a little over egging it. Those things make a big difference.

Are there any other episodes that stuck out to you?

I like this Es Devlin – she’s a designer for fashion shoots and films and live bands. Her journey for me was really interesting, dealing with spatial awareness and how you might make things happen and teams of people working. I liked the ones where she’s talking to different types of people more than when she’s talking to musicians. Although I quite liked the Lorde one she did recently. Obviously, Bella Freud is a designer and she was like, “Who is your inspiration?” And she was like, “I just like people who wear very ordinary clothes, like Phil Collins.” [laughs] It was so kind of anti-fashion, it was really funny.

It’s interesting because Lorde is also exploring gender identity and fluidity on her new album, Virgin. Have you heard it?

No, I haven’t. I watched her at Glastonbury on telly, and that was beautiful. And I heard the podcast, but I haven’t listened to the album yet. My daughters both love Lorde. My younger daughter was at my mum’s last Sunday, and she went, “Have you heard Lorde’s new album?” And then something happened, but I was expecting her to say, “I really don’t like it!” The way she asked, I was thinking maybe she doesn’t like it, but I couldn’t say that’s actually what happened. But they loved her earlier albums. It’s interesting to see what my kids think of it.

How did Bella Freud herself inspire you?

I’ve read a lot about her relationship with her dad and her as an artist model, and she’s also had an awful lot of therapy. When she’s talking to her clients or interviewees, she’s sitting in a chair and they’re lying on the couch, and she treats them so gently and beautifully. She also shares her experiences and feelings and her relationship with her father, and it just feels very tender in the way that she exposes herself as well as finding things from her clients. Sometimes if I’m thinking what to do, I’ll imagine – because she asks some of the same questions to each person each week, like, “Was there an item of clothing when you were a child that made you feel special?” – and sometimes, I’ll answer that question for myself. I find those things quite interesting in terms of probing oneself for one’s own narrative, because I think you forget a lot about your life, don’t you? And then when you think about a pair of party shoes or something you wore at a certain time or what happened in a certain situation, and you’re like, “Oh my god, yes, that.”

It’s revealing, and it’s a bit unraveling, and that’s kind of how I write my songs. I don’t know if that bit came across, but the lyrics in some of the songs I write could have been written on a couch. I could have been lying on a therapist’s couch and saying: I remember the day I came back from my mother’s and we went past the sign where the Chinese restaurant that had the ‘Happiness’ sign outside of it had gone. Every week I came back from my mother’s, I’d arrive in London, and I would see the sign: red and gold, very faded because it had been there too long, saying “happiness.” I was welcomed back to London with this beautiful, slightly decaying sign, and it made me feel like home. And then one day, it was gone, and that was terrifying. It was upsetting. There was a plastic sign with something horrible written there, and you wonder, what is the significance of being so upset by that?

I decided to write the song ‘Happiness’, which was inspired by that moment, and “It comes and goes and comes and goes” – I had a circular pool that I put up sometimes in my garden, and we have a noodle, it’s called, and you run round and you make a whirlpool, and then you jump on your noodle and you’re spinning around, and everybody’s laughing. That’s one of the happiest times I can remember: sitting around in a whirlpool on a piece of rubber. [laughs] That’s the child in you as well, I suppose, and the dizziness.

Exhibitions: Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern and Martin Green and James Lawler’s Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London

It’s funny because when punk ended – it did seem to end, because Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, so punk was still in full flow then, but her impact became stronger and stronger, and suddenly, the whole idea of money became very visible. I think I kind of confused, like, Duran Duran’s music videos and with New Romantics – in my mind, it was empty, money-driven rubbish, she says very carefully. [laughs] So I missed a lot of the good things that were happening. I thought it was superficial, and I suppose I’d been looking for the revolution in punk, and then it felt like it just became all about clothes. It was almost like, “Well, that didn’t work, so we’ll try this.” And it didn’t feel enough for me. But I didn’t explore it enough before I kind of rejected it. One of my best friends from art school was working at the door at Taboo, and she said, “Come down. You’ll love it.” I went down and stood in the queue with a couple of friends, and then we didn’t even go in.

But years later, I was sharing a dressing room with Leigh Bowery when we were doing Fete Worse than Death, and it was just this incredible presence. He had his partner naked, but in red paint with her head in his crotch, and then he put on this satin bodysuit, and then a dress, and then very high-heeled shoes, and he went out onto the stage to perform. And then he leant back and gave birth to Nicola. And I was like, “Wow. This guy is incredible.” I began to explore more and more about him, and I saw him out and about occasionally and he’d have these drips coming down his head. And then I went to the Tate exhibition, a lot of his clothes were there. Suits and strange bits of clothing, lots of films and bits of painting. I popped in three times, actually, just because the atmosphere there was great.

Martin and James’ exhibition was also amazing. They managed to gather a lot of the clothes from the original participants; Martin was a DJ , and he had a lot of friends who were out and about partying at that time. So they managed to put on this incredible exhibition of all these amazing clothes. And it made me realize you must always look and listen and think – don’t just dismiss things because of where your head’s at. But maybe you have to do that sometimes. Maybe you just have to say, “Enough. I’ve got no space for that right now. It goes against everything I’m thinking and feeling and hoping for.” And in a way, that’s what happened to me at the time, and it’s only now that I can look at it with great love and admiration.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Gina Birch’s Trouble is out now via Third Man.