In the 33 years I’ve been going to gigs, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like Scott Lavene. That might be a rather bland opening into this review, but it is absolutely true when you watch him on stage. Beginning this acoustic show with one of his few acoustic songs “Late Night In Billericay” (which he claims blends small town violence with falling in love – and astonishingly does both of those things – this is a set that uses words in a quite outstanding way. He plays a new song with the hook line “sadly I’m not Steve McQueen”, before the astonishing “Broke”. He switches to the piano for “Modern World” and “Ballad Of Lynsey” but that doesn’t quite tell the story of this tremendous wordsmith. This is, we learn, his best gig in Birmingham (although to be fair if he’s telling the truth about the other ones that wouldn’t be hard), and though you can perhaps draw comparisons with the likes of Billy Bragg and Ian Dury this is a man very much doing things on his own terms and in his own way. Scott Lavene doesn’t want to be famous, he reckons. He might never be, but that’s only because what he does he’s too clever for the mainstream and hearing these songs in this stripped-down form, only makes that more clear.
It is, only a few days short of five years since I last saw Craig Finn. That night on the 9th of March 2019 I had just watched his day job, if you like, The Hold Steady play a gig in Camden. It was one of the finest concerts I have ever witnessed.
It is slightly incongruous then to see their singer sort of shuffle onto the stage in the downstairs of a Birmingham City Centre pub. But this is very much the other side to Finn. Sort of, because he’s a solo artist anyway, but also because the songs he sings, armed with just his acoustic and some stories to tell, could only come from this most original of songwriters.
Billed as the This Is What It Looks Like tour, this is Finn laying bare his vulnerabilities perhaps. It’s not just the songs that he plays – although of course they are wonderful – it is the way he draws you into his world, whether that is through opener “Be Honest” or the magnificent “The Amarillo Kid” almost doesn’t matter, because you feel like you know both him and the characters in these songs better when he is finished.
He is working on a new record, which he is very proud of he tells us and well might he be on the evidence of songs like “Shamrock” (“this is about two of my friends”, he says, before adding “I think they’re still my friends, although they haven’t heard the song yet”) and “Bethany” where he introduces us to the character that narrates most of his current songs.
To his credit, this is not The Hold Steady acoustic that many artists would have done, given the career in their main band. Indeed, there is just one THS tune in the set and “Magazines” is integral to this story, which is Finn’s story. It is interesting to hear it done in this way.
He calls “Magic Marker” “my favourite song that I ever wrote” and he speaks movingly about songs being what he calls “monuments” before “Messing With The Settings” and there’s a wonderful line in another new one he plays, “Crumbs”, which goes “maybe we should wait it out, as we’re never gonna win this war”. Maybe that is why Finn’s music resonates so strongly with people, because he’s writing for everyone, albeit from his own perspective.
“It’s Never Been A Fair Fight” is a highlight, with it’s longing to be a “proper punk” and “Newmeyer’s Roof” – which begins on the morning of 9/11, perhaps highlights how far he’s come on his journey.
As he ends with the one that gave the tour its name, he says that he’s played a lot of sad songs this evening, but in playing them maybe we’ve all found joy. That about hits the nail on the head, not just here this evening, but for all of his music.
You see, whether he is doing it for his band or for himself, almost in a way doesn’t matter because there is so much of him in these songs. Craig Finn is a wonderful talent, who in his words has found “the only thing I can do is write songs”.
That might be true, but watching him do it here, in this format, gentle and understated, up close and personal, call it what you will, was a stunning experience. Five years on, the more things change, the more they stay the same, you might say.
