‘Lavender‘ is the title song of Gemma Laurence’s new album due out this November on Better Company Records/The Orchard. It’s a song that questions a lot of situations and finds that there is actually an explanation for everything that is going on. Not an easy resolution, perhaps. Gemma told Americana UK that “‘Lavender’ is a song I wrote for my best friend when she came out as trans. So it’s a song for her, but it’s also a song for any queer person who’s in the process of coming out or struggling to do so. It’s about the difficulties of coming out and experiencing dysphoria, but it’s also a song celebrating transness and queerness. At the end of the day, it’s an anthem.”
Where Gemma Laurence’s first album and subsequent single releases have tended towards the “stripped-back” dynamic, ‘Lavender‘, being an anthem, gets a more powerful sound through the able assistance of Will Orchard on lead guitar, Micah Rubin on drums, and Charlie Dahlke on bass, backing vocals, and piano. The banjo? That’s Maine banjo girl Gemma Laurence herself.
Brooklyn-based Gemma Laurence grew up on the coast of Maine and also in the hills of Oxfordshire, and Laurence puts this time on both sides of the Atlantic down as major influences on her sound: a fusion of foot-stomping Americana with a hint of English folk.
