All photos by Andrew Leo Photography

Way back at the start of 2020, I already knew that I’d probably end up naming Scott Lavene’s second album, Milk City Sweethearts, as my top album of 2021—just as I named his Broke my favorite album of 2019—because I’d heard nearly every song on the album in demo form long before it was released. The demos sounded like finished songs, and as my long-suffering wife will attest to, I played the shit out of those demos. Over and over and over again, for like three or four months straight. (Luckily she liked them, too. “That fucking love song about amphetamines is now stuck in my brain forever,” she told me.)

Milk City Sweethearts—out now on vinyl and streaming in all the usual places—is a damned fine album. There are no weak songs on it. It’s all killer, no filler, but certain numbers do still stand out. Lucky for you, I’ve posted it below. There is no obstacle whatsoever between you and hearing what I think is just… the very finest example of an up & coming singer-songwriter making music today. I get it, you’ve never heard of the guy, nevertheless I am not wrong. If you like the likes of Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Squeeze—or Father John Misty—you will, I am absolutely certain of it, find much to love in Scott Lavene’s music. Maybe even scroll down and play it as the soundtrack to reading the rest of this post? You won’t regret it.

And it’s not just the music, because he is also a wonderfully charismatic performer. It is impossible not to be charmed by his (often quite elaborate) music videos and easy to imagine The Scott Lavene Show turning up on television one day. Sketch comedy, celebrity guests, a little song and dance… He’s that sort of “old fashioned” performer. You don’t encounter his particular brand of talent much these days, you just don’t.

So yeah, Milk City Sweethearts is my very, very favorite album of the year (the runner-up is Cathal Coughlin’s terrific Song Of Co-Aklan). I think you should hear it. And if you like it (what’s not to like???) you should tell all your friends. Scott Lavene, at this point in his career, is still very much a word-of-mouth sort of artist, so please spread the love and maybe follow him on Twitter?

What more can I say? Time for me to give Scott a chance. I asked him a few questions over email. Below you will find an embedded a Spotify playlist, and several of Scott’s latest videos, including the premiere of “The Toffee Tickler,” directed by the very talented Ryan Anderson, who often collaborates with Lavene.

As you don’t have an obvious fit with the same pop charts that recognize Dua Lipa, BTS or Olivia Rodrigo, how do you and your label go about promoting your music? What is the strategy?

The strategy is mainly banging on closed doors. Sending emails to radio and bloggers and magazines. Sending hard copies of the album when they show up. We have distribution which helps get the record in shops. For this album we had funding for some PR but they did pretty much nothing so we just rely on word of mouth. But, since the pandemic it seems i’ve got more of an audience as more people are coming to my shows and we’ve sold more pre orders. It’s growing. People that like my music really really like it.  Broke wasn’t really doing much until Dangerous Minds found the record so we just crack on and wait for the little breaks. 

Where do you see yourself fitting in?

I’m not sure I fit in anywhere. Everyone I get compared to is from the 70’s. I think of myself as an old fashioned songwriter though I’ve been added to a couple of post punk playlists so I guess I’m also that, which is ok as it’s a bit of a thing at the moment. But, oh my do I love writing ballads. I’ve written a new album that I’m hopefully going to record soon and it’s more of the same odd stories and trying to make pop songs out of mental health problems. Then after that I’m going to make a whole album of ballads. Big stinky, cynical, weepy ones. I guess I don’t want to fit in. A lot of my heroes just made what they liked and didn’t fit in anywhere other than in their own worlds and that’s what I’m aiming for, invites into my delicious environment of bad love and misfits.

Well I have noticed that nearly every single time that I’ve pestered someone to have a listen to what you do—and they actually listen—you make an instant convert. I sent a link to “The Ballad of Lynsey” to a arch rock snob friend of mine and his immediate reply was “You’re right, this guy is some kind of genius.” Bart Bealmear, one of the writers at Dangerous Minds heard about you first via that post I did about you in 2019, and he told me that his wife and also his mother-in-law became big fans of Broke as well. It seems to me that anytime someone with good taste is exposed to your music, you gain a new fan.

Yeah. It seems that when people get it, they really get it. And they get it bad. These are the people that make it all worth it, that make me think I’m not just churning out shit. I’m terrible at networking and getting in people’s faces. I just can’t be bothered, and I’m shy. But, anyway, I feel successful. There was a time when i thought I might not play again. Plus, I’ve made some great music in the last few years, music I’m proud of, music that’s taken years of living to make. Teenagers, the middle aged and oldies buy my records. I love it.
 

 
I think tenacity is the key and that you’ll just have to keep plugging away, and producing new music and eventually the fans will find you, and then they’ll have an deep back catalog to discover. You’re like a one-man version of the Go-Betweens, but eventually people did catch on to them. I think it will happen for you, I really do. Your music is just too good. Now what about your publishing? I can easily imagine your stuff being used in TV and movies.

A one man version of the Go-Betweens is my new favourite compliment, thank you. I think I’m getting better. I thought I’d never write an album like Broke but Milk City Sweethearts is better yet and this next one I’m working on is going to be amazing. And yes, I’ve got a new publisher. A small but great one based in Newcastle called Wipeout Music. They’re working away on that side of things so we’ll see. It used to be called selling out but fuck that. If it means I haven’t got to get a normal job for a while then I’ll sell out in a flash. However it would be ironic to make advertising money from a song called “Broke.”

Much more with Scott Lavene after the jump, including the premiere of his latest video, after the jump…

 
*Yet

I loudly declared singer songwriter Scott Lavene’s 2019 album Broke to be my top favorite album of that year, and even though it’s not out yet, his upcoming album is already in my top two of 2021 (the other being Cathal Coughlan’s superb Song Of Co​-​Aklan). The title of his new one is Milk City Sweethearts, but you can’t buy it until mid-September (pre-order vinyl here.) It’s really good. I reckon it’s even better than the first one and that’s a tall order.

There have already been three new videos produced for the album and we’ve got the first two for you below. I asked Scott Lavene some questions via email.

Is “Nigel” based on a real person that you know?

The song was supposed to be for a theatre show I was almost part of, but it didn’t work out so it ended up being the first song I wrote for the album. It’s based on a friend of mine who was once a very pretty man but is now lost to the deep. I often see him, thinner and more ragged each time, cycling around town. I’ve fictionalized him for the sake of the song. Really, “Nigel” is about damaged people finding comfort within each other.

Your Lou Reed tribute?

I wrote the song in a different key. It was a bit more shouty. Then, after playing around with it one night I recorded the demo in a more relaxed key and spoke the vocal which felt better. And yes, a bit more Lou Reed. Also it mentions standing on corners which is very him. I mean, sub consciously I’m probably always trying to make a Lou Reed tribute and maybe this song is the closest I’ve got. Accidentally, of course.
 

 
”Lord of Citrus” starts out sounding a bit Beefheartian. Were you listening to the good Captain when you were writing your upcoming album?

I’m never far from the Captain. I was listening to a lot of stuff. Mainly 80s alternative music but also Brain Eno’s first couple of albums and ESG.  The intro to “Lord Of Citrus” was a bit of a happy accident. I played the guitar to the intro in the ‘wrong’ key but it sounded so bloody right.

Your videos are always so well done on an indie budget. What’s the story with the excellent new animated video?

Well, it’s a guy called Ryan Anderson. He’s a fan and we started a back and forth and a mutual admiration for each other’s work. His Instagram animation was so good, the early stuff is just very twisted and right up my alley. I asked him if he could splice a few pieces together and he just made me a video. First for last year’s “Lover” and then I knew I wanted him to do a couple more for the album even though we have virtually no budget. He’s a sport and completely wonderful. I’d get him to every video if i could but they’ll definitely still be a couple of videos of me pissing about. Luckily I like making my own videos. It’s a challenge to do them for no money and with limited equipment.
 

 
If Scott Lavene‘s name isn’t familiar, you can click here for the complete rundown on this up and coming English singer-songwriter. If you’re not familiar with his music yet, you’re in a for a real treat. Lavene’s debut album, Broke was easily one of the best albums of 2019—in fact I wrote “Any ‘best albums of 2019’ lists that don’t have Scott Lavene’s ‘Broke’ near the top are bullshit,” as you can see I felt pretty strongly about it—and he’s already working on the follow-up. If you haven’t heard Scott’s music yet, lucky you. And if you have, lucky you, too, because today we’re premiering the animated video for a new song of his called “Lover.”

Scott writes:

“I had this song ‘Lover’ that didn’t make the album. A B-side. The final release from the last album before settling in to work on the next one.  I wanted a video for it and since we are on lockdown i was just going to make a green screen and perhaps make something odd at home. Then a guy started following me on Instagram called Ryan D. Anderson. 

His animations are amazing and his humour is brilliant and bizarre. I asked him if he had anything lying around that I could use for a video, something odd, didn’t have to be too polished. So, he’s a fan and said he’d be happy to make something specific for the song. A completely excellent human. A comedian and writer. A Canadian. Hopefully we’re going to collaborate again. Here’s his website.”

More Scott Lavene on Bandcamp.

 
Earlier this year, I was reading an article about the Sleaford Mods on Louder Than War when I clicked over to a sidebar link to a video John Robb had posted which he said was “like all the great moments of Stiff Records rolled into one.” Naturally the heady promise of this description piqued my interest and I immediately hit play on the video for Scott Lavene’s “Mentholated Blue.” I teach film at the university and I thought the video, featuring Lavene in colorful street scenes of Harlem and Coney Island, would be worth showing to my students. So I heard it twice that day, and I thought “what a really pretty song” but that was about it. Then this semester I thought I’d show it again. This was just the third time I’d heard it and after that I simply could not get that song out of my head. Not that I wanted to. “Mentholated Blue” is a sweetly gorgeous love song and I found that it really appealed to me. I played the video again and again. Then I noticed that there were several more Scott Lavene videos, so I watched a few of them, (literally) laughed out loud many times and then looked to see if the album—titled Broke—was streaming on Tidal. It was.

You know how you always know the first songs better than the last ones on most albums because you rarely get to the end of one? I’d play the first three songs on Broke, then I’d have to do something. Then I’d return to it and get a bit further along and with each subsequent song I was hearing I began to see the contours of an extremely impressive songwriting talent emerge. And as I’d already seen in his music videos, the man was a wonderfully comic and highly charismatic performer. This Scott Lavene character really caused me to sit up and pay attention to what he was doing. No one in the media (other than John Robb, of course) told me I was supposed to like this. I felt like I had truly discovered a major—and as yet completely unknown—talent.

Sadly the views on his videos seemed depressingly low for how brilliant they were and for the great deal of effort that had obviously put into them. But I did notice that the online reviews of Broke were largely in line with my own opinions.

Read a few excerpts from them, so you don’t think it’s just me:

Scott Lavene finds the wonder in the ordinary

“I’m not cool,” says British singer-songwriter Scott Lavene. Nor does he try to be. In a scene overloaded with Arctic Monkeys wannabes, the earnestness of someone who marches to their own beat shines like a beam of sun through cloudy skies.

Backseat Mafia: Album Review Scott Lavene Broke

Back in 2016 I reviewed an album by an act called Big Top Heartbreak. Deadbeat Ballads was one of those albums where the personality of its creator truly shone through. It was a shame then that it languished in relative obscurity, with even being absent from some of the bigger music cataloguing websites. Its cult appeal was obvious though, and it was heartwarming when I saw the hits for the review here on Backseat Mafia slowly but steadily creep upwards years after its release. Deadbeat Ballads had an appeal beyond its cult appeal. Big Top Heartbreak made music that endured. For the next couple of years after its release, I kept my ear to the ground for news on Big Top Heartbreak, hoping that there would be a follow up to Deadbeat Ballads, but alas, as time progressed it seemed that it would be the sole standalone release for a talent that just didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Then a few months ago an email dropped into my inbox asking if I would like to review a new release by some guy called Scott Lavene. In the back of my mind a connection was made. An email was fired back to the PR company, asking if this was the same Scott Lavene who had previously recorded as Big Top Heartbreak. Turned out it was. Not only that, but the album was on its way to me.

Be it music released as Big Top Heartbreak, or under his own name, Scott Lavene has an innate talent for narratives delivered from the social perspective of those on the fringes of society. Not only that, but his instantly recognisable voice encourages empathy for those characters he is singing from the perspective of. Now you might think that that is one of the main requirements of any singer, but you’d be amazed just how rare that quality actually is, but it is one that Lavene has a surplus of.

***snip***

As is often the way with albums made of songs with string narratives, Broke is an album where different songs leap out at you every time you play it. “Super Clean,” “Modern World” and the title track are three tracks that never fail to make an impression, while “Methylated Blue” is an accessible number with a measure more production polish than the rest of the album. “Methylated Blue” practically screams out as the song with the most crossover potential, as it is complete with pretty melody, a chorus which hooks you in, and once again a narrative that even those of us unfamiliar with the references that Lavene makes can’t help but have an emotional response to.

Broke is an album which encourages these emotional responses, but doesn’t do anything so crass as demand them. It’s an album that gradually convinces you of its worth without having to shout about it, and in a music scene where competing for attention is the norm, it’s lovely to have an album by an artist that has a clear and convincing voice, rather than trying to shout above everyone else. Regardless of what name Scott Lavene records his next album under, I’ll be listening out for him.

Singer-Songwriter Produces One of the Best Albums of the Year So Far

Imagine if, instead of being born to an Evangelical Christian family in Maryland, Father John Misty grew up in the UK, spending his formative years smoking rollies outside the local Wetherspoons. With Scott Lavene, we have something similar to what we’d expect. On the basis of his debut album Broke, we’re witnessing the arrival of a promising talent with a gift for language.

[I know Josh Tillman and this is amusingly on target if you ask me. Compare Lavene’s “Modern World” to anything on FJM’s Pure Comedy.]

God is in the TV: Scott Lavene’s Broke

It shouldn’t be thought that Broke is a throwaway affair, however. Flotsam it ain’t. A fair chunk may be easily imaginable as the inspiring outro movie for a grimy but ultimately uplifting British movie, but, there is a grit and emotion that gives it weight. It’s ramshackle but there is depth. Took a couple of listens to get to that heft, but it’s there. A sincerity and honesty in the raw lyrics. Not being someone who obsesses over lyrics, it takes a lot to prick up my ears. Here you get the full range from urban meanders about gentrification and getting loaded to the plaintive, “dancing on two left feet, straight into the arms of some place new.” As a description of the human condition, that rather nails things.

Broke is a totally British record. There are sparkles and glitter over the possible highlight, “Methylated Blue,” but even those lyrics about stars in the sky seem anchored by the half-arsed ordinariness of suburbia. Suburban country blues with half-spoken, half-sung musings; that about sums up this effort. That may not sound immediately inspiring, depending upon your tastes, but it certainly grew on me. Putting on weight and gaining two extra points by the third listen.

Folking: Scott Lavene’s Broke

Have a listen to “Methylated Blue” and it will give you a sense of Levene’s style – musical, conversational and with the wit that you can hear in the chorus “Girl, you’re really someone I can get used to/ She said ‘Boy you’re really someone I could get used to too’.” It’s not Romeo and Juliet – but it captures the couple beautifully. Like the best of, say, Otway or Dury, you’re simultaneously in the song sympathetic to the characters and seeing them from a third person perspective. Rather nice.

I agreed with all of the above wholeheartedly. Lest you be thinking I cherry picked the best reviews to bolster what I’m saying here, that’s just about all of them. This guy is a major, major talent, but these reviews, as nice as they all are, seemed to be coming from small blogs. No attention from the media capital of London.

Finally, after taking at least a week to get there, I listened to “Someplace New,” the final song on Broke. It was more on in the background. I wasn’t really paying attention to the words, but the melody, his voice and the way he was singing, almost subconsciously, moved me to tears. That’s a neat trick. And then I started it from the beginning again. This time I paid attention and oh boy is that song a strong fucking close to an undeniably brilliant record. Achingly gorgeous, if “Someplace New” was the final number in a Broadway or West End musical, there would not be a single dry eye in the house.

So yeah, I feel like I’ve “discovered” someone under the radar who could be, and should become, a well-known and respected songwriter-performer. And I’m trying to spread the word. Life experiences, as you will see below, have given Lavene a lot to write about. His songs can be deeply funny, but they can also be just… deep. Although Scott Lavene is almost always compared to Stiff artists like Elvis Costello or Ian Dury—justifiably so if you ask me—I also can’t help thinking his songwriting compares favorably to Randy Newman’s work.

In any event, Scott Lavene is constantly getting compared to some of the greatest storytelling singer songwriters of our time. There must be a reason for that, right?

So this is my Christmas gift to you, DM readers. If you like what you hear, spread the word about Scott Lavene’s music. You can buy Broke on Amazon (the CD is currently on sale for $5.57) or via Scott’s Bandcamp page.

After the jump, I ask Scott Lavene a few questions over email and there are LOADS of great videos and a Spotify playlist of ‘Broke’...