Scott Lavene: Automobiles, Buses, Bedsits and Outlets
CD | LP | DL
Obtainable from 22 August 2025
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
Scott Lavene’s third album is a pleasant, wistful exploration of age, longing, lust and marathon highway journeys
These already aware of Scott Lavene will know his terrain: pin-sharp, kitchen-sink observations, rites-of-passage vignettes, musical snapshots of a misplaced – if fondly remembered – Essex youth.
Our gnarled protagonist’s daydreams could also be of ladies, glitz and glamour – see the good Sadly I’m Not Steve McQueen, from 2024’s Disneyland in Dagenham – however his coronary heart belongs firmly to the A13: the DNA that snaps him like an emotional bungee wire again to reminiscences of automobiles, women, price range booze, and mad-cap adventures. Three albums deep and the novelty of Lavene’s comic-tinged schtick may simply have began to lose its attraction. It’s testomony to his expertise – and co-producers Stew Jackson and Ryan Rogers’ sympathetic strategy – that the ten numbers that make up Automobiles, Buses, Bedsits and Outlets are painted in vivid colors, brushstrokes lovingly utilized from an expanded musical palette.
There’s some superb storytelling at work right here. Lavene’s spirit could also be punk, however the steel-capped DMs are planted firmly within the people custom. His eager ear for melody shines by means of the nasal twang of his supply – a sing-speech strategy each charmingly downhome and extremely applicable, all of a chunk with the geography of his tales. The songwriting chops are matched by an eye fixed for lyrical element that commonly transforms the humdrum into moments of actual depth and poignancy; a neat trick that has a behavior of catching you off guard. Take third single providing, and opening observe Muscle Automotive, the place Lavene desires of his fantasy ‘62 Chevy Impala’, a motor for which he possesses solely the quantity plate, purchased from a boot sale, however desires of at some point proudly owning in full. It brings to thoughts Johnny Money’s 1976 One Piece at a Time, during which our hero goals to steal his dream automobile little by little from the meeting line; solely in Lavene’s world, the realisation hits that the automobile’s goal serves solely as a metaphor for want – the woman means all the things – ‘extra to me than any muscle automobile, you’re my French riviera’.
As a calling card, it’s thematically good. Automobiles habitually loom massive in Lavene’s panorama – in actual fact, there’s a tune (one other single reduce) by that very title. In opposition to the backdrop of a tough abrasive guitar, Lavene lists the motors of his life, their personalities and the scrapes they’ve landed him in – ‘my Granada was the delight of the faculty automobile park… ‘the smoke from the tyres coated us in a theatrical mist’. By no means have the small print of a New Yr’s drive from Romford to Edinburgh – fuelled (amongst different issues) by the adrenalin-boosting injection of the Baywatch soundtrack – appeared fairly so engaging.
There’s a lot to please in right here – it’s nice enjoyable from first observe to final. A Bus in July is a magnificence, the place Lavene’s means with imagery proves significantly potent – ‘hotter than a Greek canine battle’, with a ‘provider bag stuffed with custard’, and a love curiosity that ‘smelt of second-hand books and newly washed hair.’
Shades of classic Springsteen might be detected on the charming House, the place the motorik chug of a cheap-sounding drum machine drives swelling key modifications, towards a thumbnail, blue-collar backdrop of Romford life and love, replete with boy racers and fruit machines: ‘Now the one city we’ve ever recognized fades backstage, you see dwelling will not be a spot, it’s an individual’.
It is usually a report that rewards the listener the extra time they spend with it. There’s an odd contact of prog rock on Breakdown, a refrain reminiscent, of all issues, of early Break up Enz – that’s earlier than Lavene brings us crashing again to actuality – ‘I’m hanging on to an ashtray with an image of Rod Stewart, that I acquired from the little village reward store’. Listening on headphones reveals additional layers: muttered background noises, or vocal ticks that each one feed neatly into the combination.
Above all, although, beneath the mockney insurgent exterior lies a giant, beating romantic coronary heart, and a burning want for connection. It could be figuring out, however it’s by no means arch. By turns wistful and playful, when the joke, because it so usually is, is on Lavene, we’re all laughing with him, and simply as exhausting as he’s laughing at himself – a correct diamond within the tough. Half Ray Davies, half Billy Bragg. All Scott Lavene.
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You’ll find Scott Lavene on-line right here Scott Lavene Bandcamp and right here Scott Lavene Instagram
All phrases by Steve Morgan @stevemorgan68.bsky.social. His profile is right here.
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