When I first started talking to Bella (she/her) & Neil (he/him) from the California based punk based Lavender Scared about their newest EP Hunger No More, I truthfully had my reservations at first when it was described to me as being a folk-punk release. I’m personally, not a huge fan of some folk punk music, as I was fully expecting fast picking acoustic guitar with noticeable fret buzz, and harsh yelling vocals. I was extremely surprised to learn that was NOT the case once I pressed play on this EP. Full of acoustic guitars, yes but this EP is the total opposite of harsh. Self-recorded during quarantine in their newly found home in Chicago, Illinois, Lavender Scared brings a whole new meaning to “punk.” Lavender Scared is a queer-punk band formed in Berkeley, CA in 2016, now in Chicago, IL. The group is comprised of married couple Neil Lawrence (on vocals) and Bella King (on guitar, bass and vocals), as well as a rotating cast of rhythm section players. Their first release was the mask4mask EP, after which they cut their teeth playing shows across the West Coast and in the Bay Area’s storied DIY community. During this time, absolutely nobody in the band went to jail for vandalism. In 2019 Lavender Scared released their first full length LP, It Gets Bitter, a loose concept album about the perilous transition between being a drunk gay teenager and a drunk gay adult. The onset of the coronavirus pandemic pushed the band to entirely self-produce and home-record their new music, as well as indulge a long-standing love of folk-punk and country. The result is their new record Hunger No More, a four-song EP recorded in Berkeley and mixed in Chicago, where the band relocated to. Lawrence and King are both transgender, and at one point or another have both been labeled enemies of the state by multiple politicians, including both the current sitting president and the next up.

Track Listing

Hunger No More
Passing Through
Condemned!
The Space You Leave

The opening track, also the title track, of the EP Hunger No More starts us off with a pretty acoustic chord progression I’ve admittedly heard before, but then Neil starts singing and immediately you’re like, “Oh I have not heard this before.” For an acoustic song, Lavender Scared does a great job at keeping the song MOVING up and up; keeping the listener on their toes. The big group vocals at the end of the song with the rolling snare melodically chanting the title “hunger no more,” feels like you’re driving off into the sunset on an empty highway. Passing Through is the song that reminds you that this is indeed a punk band. Lavender Scared gets political in this song, explicitly mentioning that with the opening lyrics “I’m not going to vote on Tuesday nobody should be the president. I will cast my ballot wrapped around a brick, unless one of em wants to pay my rent.” (This is painting a pretty sick picture in my head to be honest)

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Photo Credits - Neil Lawrence and Bella King

“Our new EP Hunger No More explores themes of transience, rootlessness, and walking carefully on the line between this world and the next one. The title track was inspired by meeting communities of feral cats in New Orleans cemeteries as well and empty lots in San Pablo, CA. After years of touring and traveling soundtracked by folk-punk and country music, we allowed those influences to come naturally into our songwriting. ”

— Lavender Scared

- So I see y'all are from Berkely California and recently moved to Chicago during the pandemic. What inspired the move? Have you ever experienced a snowy winter before?

Bella: Well, I grew up in the Bay Area, and all told spent about 23 years living there, plus a year in Olympia WA. Once the pandemic hit the Bay’s music scene shut down completely and we were left unemployed paying high rent for a small space in a communal house, we went on rent strike for a time alongside our roommates, but eventually decided we needed a change and a cheaper cost of living. Chicago has been very beautiful and welcoming so far. The colder temperatures have been a change, but our old house in the Bay had no heat or insulation so winters were always brutal anyway.

Neil: I grew up in northeast LA and met Bella during college in Berkeley. I spent a total of 6 years in the East Bay watching the rising tide of gentrification and a spiraling housing crisis. The final straw was my recent diagnosis with hip dysplasia - I have no idea when I’ll be able to work again. We felt it was time to pack up for somewhere with more reasonable rent and a little more space, but I’m not really a cabin in the woods kind of person. I have family ties to Chicago on both sides and it’s a powerful place in anarchist and architectural history. Winter is fascinating to Californians. Seeing snow is like going to the moon. I spent a week in Yosemite in the depths of blizzard season as a kid and I think I fell in love, so I’m beyond excited.

- What is the fondest show or tour memory you have that comes to mind right away?

Bella: Without a doubt my fondest tour memory is a show we played at a punk house in Portland on the fourth of July a few years back. My guitar was unexpectedly messed up so I had to borrow one, and before we started playing proper I did an ironic guitar rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner and encouraged the crowd of 200 assembled punks to boo as loud as possible. We played one of our best shows to date in that tiny sweaty basement, and afterwards joined members of the audience in roaming throughout the upper middle class neighborhood nearby looking for American flags to steal off porches and set on fire. We ended up deciding against burning them so as to avoid getting the show shut down, and instead sawed them into ribbons of piss-soaked red white and blue fabric that our bass player further chewed up into scraps. No one went to jail and we met some amazing fellow musicians that night who ended up becoming a big part of our lives.

Neil: We played this one house show in Davis and we rocked the hell out of this living room - people were going nuts, I felt like such a rock star. I look out into the pit and see this guy I went to middle and high school with just tearing it up (hi Chris, miss you). That’s such a surreal movie type moment for somebody who was the picture of a queerdo dork growing up - I was not cool, I did not go to shows, I was David Tennant for Halloween, you get the picture. And being a performer is all about confidence. I like to say that I don’t play any instruments, but I play the crowd. So if somebody who knew me in my Tumblr and giving myself haircuts days can get out there and fuck shit up, I’m doing my job.

- How do you feel the Internet has impacted the music business?

Bella: It seems to me like the Internet took down most of the barriers between musician and audience, and furthermore made it easier than ever to make music and release it. In my opinion this has been a net good for the art form, it’s horizontal and accessible in a way that it never was before, and this has led to some incredible artistic breakthroughs from people who wouldn’t have had the platform otherwise.

However, it’s also removed most of the musician’s ability to support themselves off of their craft, and especially in the age of streaming giants like Spotify, it’s unquestionable that artists are being exploited of the fruits of their labor to an outrageous degree. Personally, it makes me really thankful for all the people who buy our records directly from us. I think the DIY (do it yourself) music community is vital to the survival of artists in the present moment, especially with the effective destruction of the live music industry at all levels due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Neil: People have so much access to you. It’s a good thing and a bad thing - I’m on twitter a lot and it’s easy to get paranoid or worry about being able to set boundaries. At the same time, we made so many new fans from getting featured on the No Dogs In Space podcast - we sent an email, they liked us, and their fanbase is international. I love being able to reach people who would otherwise never have heard what we have to say.

- What was the first album/CD you bought for yourself?

Bella: Viva La Vida by Coldplay.

Neil: The entirety of My Chemical Romance’s discography on CD on my mom’s Amazon account.

EP Review: Lavender Scared "Hunger No More"