Gina Birch of London Post-Punk Outfit The Raincoats Returns With Video for “Causing Trouble Again”

Like shards of glass exploding in a dimly lit basement bar or a searing blowtorch riff slicing through the cobwebs of decorum, “Causing Trouble Again” is an unbridled catalyst. Gina Birch, co-founder of The Raincoats and an enduring thorn in the side of patriarchy, shouts from the heart of punk’s unruly archive. Her voice, a raspy rallying cry infused with grit and defiance, resonates as she invokes the names of women who boldly rejected the straight and narrow, slipping away through the fire escape into uncharted territory.

There’s no saint-making here, no delicate ode. This is a battering chant, a punk psalm lit by mischief. Birch doesn’t sing about history, she drags it screaming into the room, booting it through the amps. The guitars growl like warning dogs, the bass line marches in steel-toe cadence. Every bar is a nail driven through nostalgia, every beat a refusal to shut up. The climax of the song is a roster of all kinds of rabble-rousers, recited in a style recalling The Divine Comedy’s The Booklovers.

The video, born of a Bob Dylan lyric: “a white ladder all covered with water” – spirals like a dream soaked in gasoline. Trouble, in Birch’s world, isn’t something to avoid. It’s the only honest response.

“I became obsessed with white ladders,” says Burch. “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.

In the clip co-directed by Dean Chalkley and Gina Birch, she’s joined by Ana da Silva (her Raincoats bandmate), Christine Binnie, Amy Rigby, Lora Logic, Daisy Parris, Georgina Starr, Jill Westwood, Bobby Baker, Annie Symons, Shirley O’Loughlin, and more.

Watch below:

Formed in London in 1977, The Raincoats emerged from the punk explosion but quickly carved out their own unruly corner of sound; awkward, angular, anarchic. Founded by Gina Birch and Ana da Silva, the band fused punk’s DIY ethic with elements of dub, folk, and experimental noise, challenging both musical and gender conventions. Their self-titled debut, released on Rough Trade in 1979, became a touchstone of post-punk minimalism, revered by figures like Kurt Cobain, who famously called them “wonderfully classic.”

Birch, a visual artist as much as a musician, brought an instinctive rawness to the band’s sound and ethos. The Raincoats disbanded in the mid-’80s but returned in the ’90s, buoyed by renewed interest from the alternative scene. Birch has since continued to perform, paint, and provoke: her solo work, including her last offering I Play My Bass Loud, carrying forward the band’s fearless, feminist spirit. The Raincoats remain a cult force: jagged, joyful, and unrepentantly original.

Follow The Raincoats:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube