Neat, bittersweet: Elita and Scott Lavene
Genre: Indie Rock
I await a new Scott Lavene single like a Midwestern housewife yearns for Sunday church like a Londoner stands by for sunny weather, or like a pick-pocket yearns for payment day down at the big offices.
There are plenty of weirdos making music these days. But most of them have a horrible secret of moonlighting as accountants and insurance agents. They know how the stock market is doing, and they can’t wait to get a hit so that they can buy a new car.
There are few characters, however, in the music world. There’s an absence of recording artists whose personalities shine almost as brightly as the music, who could make or break their career on a single quote.
Scott Lavene is one of those exceptions, a British singer-songwriter who writes his career out in the same way that a 1970s comedy writer might develop a key character.
Waitrose Has Run Out Of Lobsters finds Lavene in much the same disposition as he’s always had. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket, but good ol’ Scott is one of the only ones capable of cracking a smile. This is a song about first-world problems, set to musical accompaniment that sounds like a beginner DJ learning to stitch Lou Reed and Phil Collins together.
Hard not to root for a fellow like Scott, really!
Elita – It’s a Joke
Genre: Indie Pop, Dream Pop, Alt Pop
Modern cinema and the pop music world have left us all with towering heights of emotion that we can’t be asked to reach. Sure, their bread and butter are stories about regular folks. Somehow though, their lives are just always more interesting.
It’s not just what they do. Most romantic comedies, for example, are stories of ordinary Joes and Janes. It’s how they end up feeling. You can always bank on a production worth its salt to milk moments of pure drama or absolute exhilaration.
That’s not really how it works for most people. The lights don’t suddenly go bright when they fall in love, there’s no great chorus accompanying their attempts at self-improvement, and rarely are there wise words about learning from mistakes.
What we do have, fortunately, are songs that, if played at the right time, can make us feel like we’re in the movies. Elita’s It’s a Joke is bitter bubblegum rock that comes complete with a marvelous chorus and nifty costumes. It’s music made by a band that, if it does truly exist, sounds and looks as if they’re unflappable, living outside of space and time somewhere on a silver screen of the imagination.
