Gina Birch – ‘Trouble’ album review: Greatness and gratuitous production
THE SKINNY: Gina Birch has been around for a long time. Even if you don’t know the name, you’ll have been touched by her influence. In the 1970s and ‘80s, her band The Raincoats were important. Racing along in the first wave of post-punk and providing early inspiration for the coming Riot Grrrl movement, their impact would not only shape their era, but craft ones to follow. Decades on from that, Birch’s second album, Trouble, proves she still has the creative mind to make something genuinely new and interesting. But is it good?
In parts, yes. A lot of it is very good. The instrumentation on this album is incredible. Each new song brings in some new texture to be added to the pot, mixing so much in but still somehow keeping it cohesive. It’s heavily electronic until suddenly ‘Cello Song’ is like a classical film score. It’s high-octane and fun until ‘Train Platform’ goes full goth.
The instrumentation truly keeps you on your toes and speaks to Birch’s pioneering spirit. Here is an artist who has had the privilege of being around many other incredible artists from various musical worlds. Bringing in elements of dance, folk, funk, and her home ground of post-punk, there is always something new, but it doesn’t feel overbearing.
What does feel overbearing is Birch’s vocals. Here’s where I struggle. The Raincoats had Birch and Ana da Silva passing the vocals between them, bringing in some dynamics and a softer sound against Birch’s more spoken word style. But when it’s all her here in her solo work, it grows exhausting. Layer onto that a lot of autotune, and not in a fun Charli XCX kind of way and not even in a way that improves her voice, merely as a glitchy choice, and it gets worse.
While in some songs, that issue blends into the busy backing, in others, it stands out like a boulder in the way and blocks out the ability to truly engage with and enjoy the rest of the record, as her voice feels so jarring right in the middle.
But obviously, it’s all objective. For fans of Birch’s voice, her use of vocal effects might prove utterly thrilling as a fun play around with a sound they already like. Without that, though, some of the choices that purposefully push her sound out of key or outside of a more traditional or universally nice sound just get grating and make it hard to focus on the good bits being built around it.
For fans of: Glitchy tracks that are maybe supposed to be ironic.
A concluding comment from a music tech shop owner: “I think more music should use absolutely all of our products at once.”
Trouble track by track:
Release date: July 11th | Producer: Youth | Label: Third Man Records
‘I Thought I’d Live Forever’: Textured and intriguing, Birch’s vocal performance here is both so characterful and kinda creepy, while also being utterly hypnotic. [3/5]
‘Happiness’: The interesting textures continue and grow as Birch proves herself a master at crescendos and drops across this whole record. [3/5]
‘Causing Trouble’: Is there a ‘She’s Lost Control’ sample or reference in here? Either way, the instrumental is high-octane and hooking, but Birch’s vocals feel a bit at odds with it, somehow slowing the excitement of the song. [3/5]
‘Cello Song’: A complete 180, and it’s beautiful. Birch’s filmmaker’s eye is applied so vividly to this song, as it’s so poignant it almost feels visual. [3/5]
‘Keep To The Left’: OK, wait, maybe this one is really annoying. Again, the instrumental is really interesting and gripping, but Birch’s heavily autotuned vocals over the top just repeating phrases become really distracting and unpleasant in the chorus. [2/5]
‘Doom Monger’: Same here. The second Birch’s voice has scratched me wrong, and it becomes hard to heal that wound. There are nice moments here and again, the instrumentation keeps developing in such interesting directions, but the spotlight in the centre on her vocals becomes a bit glaring. [2/5]
‘Don’t Fight Your Friends’: “Don’t fight your friends, fight your enemies”, a glitchy, autotuned Birch declares. A good life lesson, an okay song, a terrible, terrible vocal. [2/5]
‘Nothing Will Ever Change That’: I can bear this one. There’s something almost Baxter Dury-inspired about it, with off-kilter verses breaking into a bigger chorus and then collapsing again, surrounded by computer-made beats. [2.5/5]
‘Hey Hey’: Similar to ‘Cello Song’, this moment where things are pulled back a second is nice and richly cinematic, bringing in some more folk-inspired elements. [2.5/5]
‘Sleep’: Put down the autotune, I beg. But then, even when she does, it’s still not good. [2/5]
‘Train Platform’: A hookingly cinematic closer that immediately pulls you into the narrative. As a five-minute-long storytelling track that opens with a plea to god and grows more and more tense with each minute, it’s a powerful punctuation mark. [4/5]
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