Nov 292024
 
Gina Birch

Gina Birch from The Raincoats is back with a new song and it’s perfect for your holiday mix. Birch just released on Bandcamp a cover of Yoko Ono’s “Listen the Snow is Falling.”

“In 2023, I played a gig at Tate Britain when the brilliant Yoko Ono show was on at Tate Modern,” said Birch. “I thought it would be great to play one of Yoko’s songs at our performance… we chose the song because it is haunting and beautiful and it was released as a b-side. Who doesn’t love a b-side?”

The song originally appeared in 1971 as a b-side to “Happy Xmas (War is Over.)” Ono has said that she wrote the song in 1968 before she met John Lennon and she considers it her first pop song. Birch’s cover features a hypnotic drone to bring you in to the song and certainly evokes Ono’s original version, but also creates its own path.

Jul 142021
 

With its scratching violin and shouty vocals, the Raincoats’ bleak examination of a relationship “Fairytale in the Supermarket” is not for everyone. Really, little on their debut album is immediately accessible, given their tuneless vocals and aggressively noisy playing. Part of a wave of feminist post-punk in the UK in the late ’70s and early ’80s, The Raincoats became a cult band because of their distinct sound. Continue reading »