This Is the Kit @ Summerhall, Edinburgh, 21 Nov

Tonight is a reminder to never miss the support act. Opening the show is Gina Birch of The Raincoats. Birch shared her debut solo song in 2021 and this year, at 67, released the acclaimed album I Play My Bass Loud. “I know you’re all here to see This Is the Kit,” she smiles, “but you’ll have to listen to me first.” A modest quip from a punk icon with a musical career spanning over four decades. 

Birch seems to bleed fearlessness and untamed power. ‘Rage. I am rage’, are the first words she sings, roughly strumming her electric guitar as she stares intently at the audience. Though she stands alone on stage, her music fills the room thanks to a drum machine, loop pedal and a commanding voice. Lo-fi videos of a younger Birch play on the screen behind her, adding an emotional significance to the performance.

Performing an eclectic set of songs, Birch’s delivery is impassioned and captivatingly imperfect, her lyrics wise and witty. She has the crowd laughing at a tongue-twisting ballad about telling people secrets, smiling as she proclaims in song, ‘I’m glad I’m me today’, and mesmerised by heavier numbers like Dance Like a Demon. She uses every inch of her voice: at times she’s deadpan, at times shrieking – it’s an unforgettable and too-short set from a truly iconic artist. 

With the crowd warmed up, This Is the Kit soon appear on stage, led by the band’s singer and driving creative force Kate Stables. The headline act brings a very different kind of energy to the night, steady and measured in contrast with Birch’s explosive performance, but with just as much heart.

This Is the Kit’s music radiates warmth and gentleness. Their lyrics are profound and life-affirming, wise and yet somehow childlike in their ruminating. Delivered with confidence and care, the band works through material from their new record Careful of Your Keepers, as well as some much-loved older tracks. Accompanying her own remarkable voice, Stables switches from guitar to banjo, at one point whipping out a recorder to riff on and create distortion with her guitar.

You feel that there’s no hierarchy here. Stables has a knack for putting the audience at ease, chatting warmly to the crowd between songs about the tea she is drinking and what she bought in a charity shop that day (a children’s encyclopedia of the world). There’s a sense of intimacy as Stables and bassist Rozi Plain laugh through a limerick about a woman called Sue, counting in the groovy and exuberant Moonshine Freeze.

In a lull, there’s a shouted request for older track Solid Grease and the band oblige, hoping aloud that they’ll remember how it goes. After a fumbled start with Stables shouting out the chord changes to her band, the song becomes one of the highlights of the show: warm and spontaneous for all its lack of rehearsal. 

It’s a night of celebrating incredible female performers, of earnestness and pleasant surprises – the kind you’re glad you didn’t miss.