Scott Lavene is as English as pork pies and pasties, dunked biscuits in Yorkshire tea. Last year’s album Disneyland in Dagenham was full of Essex, East End poetry, and classic English post punk. Following extensive touring including many sold-out shows, Scott is back with another album entitled, Cars, Buses, Bedsits and Shops out 22nd August on Nothing Fancy. An album bursting with more dark humour, snapshots of squalor and cheek, and Scott’s unique love songs. Lavene has also announced a 22 date tour around the UK as well as festival appearances at this year’s Glastonbury, End of the Road, Lakefest and Boia festivals.

Produced by Stew Jackson, who’s worked with Massive Attack, Black Crowes, Tom Waits and Nick Cave, the record shines with Scott’s presence, alongside Ryan Rogers of Mumble Tide, co-producing and playing organs, synths and mellotron. The album came together quickly, in a five-day wonder, in Bristol, September 2024. Scott’s longer story-based songs have taken a backseat on this record with more singing than before and a higher percentage of ballads, sincere, wistful and tender. They evoke the lyrics and feelings set down by Daniel Johnston and The Magnetic Fields, Evan Dando and the immense David Berman. But a few ratty stories still remain.

Scott explains “On tour, I’d become used to playing the story based songs, the spoken word ones. But fans kept asking me why I didn’t sing anymore, which surprised me. So over the course of a month I wrote a dozen proper songs, alongside “Cars” which was something I already had, a piece of writing that went into Bits and Bobs, my short poetry book I was selling at gigs. I knew I wanted to make something more classic and polished, and when I bumped into Stew at the Bristol show he told me we should make an album and it quickly got organised. I’d been used to playing most of the instruments on the last two albums but Stew can play everything really well so he plays drums and guitars, let alone lap steel, and I just put down basic tracks and watched him and Ryan build the songs, while I sat on the sofa in the studio.”

Cars, Buses, Bedsits and Shops is fit to burst with colour, a slight change in the wacky production of old, the album is polished like a classic 70’s American singer songwriter album, an ode to Wings, to yacht rock and Neil Young. Like if Wilco and Bruce Springsteen’s baby was raised in Basildon. The combination of wry observation, humble wisdom, unguarded vulnerability and unpredictable humour makes Scott unique in today’s expansive world of artists.

Elephant Sessions

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