[1][2] The band's debut single, "Soho", was one of the first releases on the re-established Rough Trade Records in 1997.
[3] Their debut album, Slow Dirty Tears, was released on Smoke Records and in the United States early in 1998 on the Kill Rock Stars label.
[4] A departure from Birch's previous work with The Raincoats, Charles Taylor of the Providence Phoenix described the album as containing "samples, keyboard twiddling, weird noises throughout, and a dark, echoey feel", and Peter Margasak of the Chicago Reader noted Birch's "relentlessly bleak" lyrics.
[2][5] Tom Lanham of CMJ New Music Monthly described the album as "some of the most mold-breaking alterna-pop around".
[6] Andy Gill of The Independent called the album "utterly beguiling", commenting on Birch's "cartoonish inflection that paradoxically carries more humanity than most singers' desperate attempts at evoking 'soul'".