I Play My Bass Loud

Album review

At age 68, Gina Birch—bassist for punk rock's legendary The Raincoats—has released her debut solo album, and it's as angry, exhilarating, out-there and playful as the work of her youth. Only now, Birch has the empowered (and, sometimes, exhausted) wisdom of age and hindsight to inform her lyrics. "Don't ask me to be reasonable/ I can hear you/ I'm just not listening," she declares on "I Am Rage." As the romantic, '50s greaser ballad unspools, Birch lets the world know she is—more than ever—"a bubbling, burning cauldron of rage" over the way women are still sometimes treated as second-class citizens. "And Then It Happened" is a harrowing spoken-word fairy tale about losing purpose while fighting cancer amid the crumbling state of the world. "One day I stopped caring/ On and on it went/ Just not trying/ Just being," Birch says, her ragged voice echoing like she's delivering the message from a cave and her bass reverberating like a sonar trying to find her. But that slides confidently right into the big, glorious, Garbage-like "Wish I Was You" (as in: "I used to wish I was you/ But now you wish you were me"). Thurston Moore provides guitar squall here as well as on the hypnotic "Let's Go Crazy," but thankfully doesn't overshadow Birch's thrum. You can hear The Raincoats' hallmarks that were a huge influence on the riot grrrl scene and Kurt Cobain on songs like "Digging Down," with its dark dancehall vibes, and groovy "Now We're All Upset (aka Big Mouth)"—a cautionary tale about gossip. Producer Martin "Youth" Glover (Killing Joke, The Orb) layers on wild vocal effects for the latter as well as the dubby title track, which features Birch joyously announcing, "Sometimes I wake up and I wonder/ What is my job?/ I play my bass loud!" "I'm this old white woman playing my bass guitar out of my window," Birch has said of practicing at home. "I just want to stick my head out and yell down the street: HELL, I'M HERE, AND I'M PLAYING MY BASS LOUD!" "Pussy Riot," written with Helen McCallum, aka Helen McCookerybook of punk legends The Chefs and Helen and the Horns, is a Slits-like ode to the female Russian revolutionaries of the title. "I Will Never Wear Stilettos"—which sounds like AI performing a twee jewel-box melody before it turns into an ice-cold art-punk rager—finds Birch unleashing an empowered screed against high heels: "I'm not saying the city is a war zone/ But can you run in them? Sometimes you've just gotta run, run, run…" And as a woman who came of age during second-wave feminism, she uses the Raincoats-esque "Feminist Song" to proclaim: "When you ask me if I'm a feminist/ Why the hell would I not be?" © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz