Today storyteller Scott Lavene makes his highly anticipated return sharing news of third album Disneyland in Dangenham due out 10th May via Nothing Fancy. To mark the announcement, Lavene has also, shared his surreal semi-fictional new single “Debbie”. The record follows his critically acclaimed 2021 album, Milk City Sweethearts, and continuing success from popular recent singles “Waitrose Has Run Out Of Lobsters” and “Broke”.
He’s led a more eventful life than most. Lavene’s 20s took him from sleeping in a tent as he roamed around France with his guitar to flirting with the music industry proper while living on a London houseboat, and then to a period of serious mental collapse that saw him withdraw completely from music for seven years, “but I’m not that man anymore,” he says. Recent achievements include a triumphant set at End Of The Road Festival, before capping off 2023 by opening for The Hold Steady on tour, and at the band’s legendary annual New York residency based on a shared appreciation of one another’s music. The bands vocalist Craig Finn (who Lavene will tour with again later this month) is among many converted to his work and appears on Disneyland in Dagenham.
For the first time he’s completely abandoned any pretence of coolness. “I was not afraid to include everything that I like, whether or not it’s really eccentric. I wasn’t afraid of just making the record that I wanted.” Lavene says. “I think I have a really good memory for emotion. I think it’s because I’m riddled with self-pity!” Disneyland In Dagenham is no exception. It’s a record that tumbles together the autobiographical and the imagined, the heart-breaking and the preposterous; the tale of that itinerant drug-dealing horse, for instance is also a genuinely touching allegory for the way friendships can slip through one’s fingers. “The album is really about saying fuck the rules, write whatever you like.” Says Lavene
Lavene realised his storytelling couldn’t be contained by so simple a brief. ‘Debbie’, for example is a bizarre and semi-fictional song about fading love, based around a transfixingly woozy guitar line. “It’s a fucking weird song, but also my favourite thing I’ve ever done. So how could I not include it?” Lavene says.
In the 1980s the Walt Disney Company were considering building their first European theme park not on the outskirts of Paris, but in Dagenham, Essex. In his youth, Scott Lavene used to pick up drugs from a dodgy flat overlooking the proposed site. Disney and Dagenham were never a good fit, he thought, as he stood on the balcony one evening as the sun set, awaiting an overdue hash delivery. It never happened of course – perhaps the multinational corporation were put off by the sewage works and car factories that Mickey Mouse and Goofy would have counted as their neighbours.
So he recalls on the title track of his exceptional third album Disneyland In Dagenham, monologuing in warm deadpan over a wandering acoustic guitar. It encapsulates his conflicted feelings about the county he was raised. “A cowboy kind of place, a bit rough around the edges,” as he puts it. “A lot of funny stuff happened that you’d tell to normal people who’d be like, ‘What the fuck?!’” It’s changed a lot since then. Filming the video for the song, he and his sister took a drive around their old haunts along the A13. “The sewage works don’t smell anymore and they’re now calling Rainham ‘East London’, which is hilarious. It made me grateful for my past, for the shit we could get away with back then.”
Tracklisting:
1. Paper Roses (featuring Craig Finn)
2. Custard
3. Debbie
4. Horse and I
5. Disneyland in Dagenham
6. Sadly I’m not Steve McQueen
7. Julie Johnson
8. Little Bird
9. Rats
10. Keeping It Local
Disneyland in Dagenham is out 10th May via Nothing Fancy– Pre-order HERE
Tour dates:
20th Feb – Voodoo, Belfast w/ Craig Finn
21st Feb – Workman’s Cellar, Dublin w/ Craig Finn
23rd Feb – The Wardrobe, Leeds w/ Craig Finn
24th Feb – The Attic Bar, Glasgow w/ Craig Finn
25th Feb – Night & Day, Manchester w/ Craig Finn
27th Feb – The Rainbow, Birmingham w/ Craig Finn
28th Feb – Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth w/ Craig Finn
29th Feb – The Exchange, Bristol w/ Craig Finn
1st Mar – Camden Assembly, London w/ Craig Finn
2nd Mar Moth Club, London w/ Craig Finn
Tickets are available HERE
Connect with Scott Lavene:
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Spotify
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Photo credit – Hannah Turk