Pink Suits are your new favourite “non-binary queer feminist punk rock n rage” duo from Margate. Their mission is to explore “sexuality, fantasy, mental health, politics, activism and the resistance of binary gender expectations, questioning how voices and bodies can be used as a form of protest” via the media of dance, theatre, film, art, and punk rock.

Debut album ‘Political Child’ is out 16 April and it bangs, so we caught up with Lennie and Ray to find out more …

Pink Suits! We love your album. Tell us how you managed to get this written and recorded in these weird times we find ourselves in?

Thanks so much! The album has actually been written for a while, some of these songs were the first we wrote as a band almost 4 years ago. Decades back we played in our first ever set (which was Ray’s first time playing an actual drum kit!) The whole album was written gradually between 2017 – 2019 as we played more shows we wrote songs that would take the set, and untimely the album, in different directions and say what we wanted to say … The last songs we finished for this album were ‘my old man’s a dustman’ and ‘3 am’ back in 2019. We have been trying to record the album since then! It took us ages to find a studio that we felt was the right fit, we heard great punk albums by Byenary, Riviera Kid and Nervous Dogs and they were all made at Aim4 Recordings in Canterbury. So we spent most of 2020 trying to get in there. Lots of postponing sessions and closed studio and not being allowed to travel… Eventually we got in the studio in August and just smashed it out with Kate. We have been sitting with this album for what feels like forever. We can’t wait for other people to finally hear it! 


What’s your favourite track on the album and why?
Lennie: I listen to this album all the time and it always changes, honestly I love so many of these tracks. I really like anarchist wisdom right now. It is super simple and no holds barred. It’s great fun to play guitar on and I love seeing Ray screaming those lyrics. We made a no-swears edit of this one as an experiment to see if we could get it played on the radio – no bites yet!
Ray: Without question my favourite is my old man’s a dustman. It’s the opening track and it just feels like such a force from the start. The lyrics are amazing and very hard hitting, I always feel like I’m going to cry when I listen to the words, it’s fuelled by frustration and anger with this capitalist society we are forced to live in and it makes me want to go scream in front of parliament and change that dreadful system!

It feels more important than ever that we’re all political children doesn’t it? What does your title track mean to you?
‘Political Child’ came quite late in the album for us. We started writing music after 2016 – which was a big year politically and we wanted to yell about it! We were putting on shows and calling it ‘Political Child’, to reflect what we felt was a late onset teen angst vibe. We wanted to speak a lot about childhood fantasy. Trying to navigate things like sexuality and gender as we develop our sense of self. Those early shows were a lot about identity and body politics. We felt like naive kid punks playing those early gigs, both musically naive as we were learning how to play and politically naive – hoping that music could still change the world and that if we all come together in rock and rage then maybe we can foster a sense of community and kindness and tolerance. So we wrote the song political child as the title track to the album to really highlight those feelings and encapsulate what the album was trying to tackle. The corruption and greed of the establishment, abusive governments and the super rich only looking out for their own interests, the frustrations of those who want to make change but feel inadequate in doing so, but also the feeling that there is a growth in political engagement and activism. That change is happening and it wont be stopped. The song ‘Political Child’ is a sort of commitment from us as a band. That we are here to talk about these social issues, that we will call them out, we will be outspoken and loud and wild.

What’s next for Pink Suits?
The gigs are starting to come! The album comes out April 16th and there is also a new music video on the way for the song ‘Pink Suits Everyone’. Our first live show will actually be a night we are trying out in Margate called ‘Queer Cuntry’. It will be a live music and Drag night with local musicians and Drag performers that we have been planning for about a year. It has been postponed loads so finally we get to put it on June 24th at Elsewhere in Margate. It may be a surprise for people hearing the album but we love camp camp country! We like to dress up in our Dolly Parton best even when doing the punk gigs. Cowboy hats, fringe, rhinestones and boots made for stomping out the patriarchy! After that we are trying to put together a political child tour. We are playing at The Cockpit in London on 12th September and have some shows supporting ARXX that month in Margate and Folkestone and maybe more… 

Tell us about the Margate punk scene! Any band recommendations for us to check out?
Margate has a great and very varied music scene but not so much of a consistent punk scene – often great acts come to town to play Elsewhere or Ramsgate Music Hall or Tom Thumb Theatre but we would love to have more regular punk nights here. This is something we will be trying to make happen. There are great punk bands here that we love like Riviera Kid and Ode to Sleep that we have never played a Margate show with, there are probably many that we haven’t met. The wider Kent and South East punk scene is massive and exciting but we feel a bit like outsiders and we don’t know the scene so well. We are much more involved in the Queer scene in Margate. We work with Margate Pride and do a lot of shows with LGBTQIA+ musicians and drag performers, who are super punk! Performers like Dame Jame and Toska Wilde are some of the most punk performers we know. There is also a very active political and social activist scene here with groups like PeopleDem Collective, Everyday Racism, Power of Women Festival, and Canvas4Equality doing amazing things over the last year… We actually got to go to a live music event last year and saw some amazingly political performers making great outspoken work, particularly rapper Kenwa and Elz from Canvas4Equality. There is a punk sensibility in a lot of this work whether is it poetry, spoken word, rap or scuzzy power chord noise and screaming. We are here for all of it! 

Find Pink Suits on https://www.pinksuits.band/about and stay tuned for news of Pink Suits coming to a LOUD WOMEN stage near you …