For Margate musician Dan Lyons, it’s all about the location. After releasing his debut album, SubSuburbia, in 2020, he holed up in the Tom Thumb Theatre, an historic building in Margate, earlier this year to record a new album, Shuttered Dreams, with drummer Dom Hall, bassist Henry Gabbott, and singer Freya Warsi. With only a Vox Marauder, a makeshift recording studio, and a notepad filled with lyrics, Lyons moved into the theatre with the band and sought to realize the sounds bouncing around in his head. Dubbing themselves Dan Lyons & The Tenants, the band created a series of songs that spoke to their frustrations over lockdowns, personal heartache, and the feeling of being out of control in a world where emotional disconnection has become normalized.
And with their new single, Golden Handshake,” they join forces with Sorry singer Asha Lorenz to offer their unique take on a shuffling acoustic ballad that eventually blossoms into a fuzzed-out rock revelation. The track explores themes of self-discovery and the impact of social structures on youthful consciousness, with lyrics like “raised by a capitalist empire/killed by the truth” pointing to both the deadening influence of private enterprise and the way it strips away autonomy from those working within its laborious machinery. Despite the pervasiveness of this bitter perspective, the song does allow some light to shine through, asking us to find purpose, find love, find anything — just so that we can call it our own. And it wraps all this around a clever story about an aging actor looking for success away from Hollywood.
Lyons addresses the song: “Hollywood Babylon! A falling star struggles with his existence and reminisces about the good old days, destined for a tragic and clichéd end he starts to wonder if there’s a life outside of the silver screen…
We recorded this one near the end of the album sessions, Asha came down to the studio with my friend Sydney and I asked her if she’d sing on the middle 8 – it’s my favourite part of the song.”
He goes on to say that “We had a lot of fun recording this one. It feels strangely positive, despite the subject matter, and there’s lots of weird percussion stuff going on which I like. It’s a lot looser than most of the record, feels like you’re in the room with everyone. Everybody played really well too, which helps…”
The accompanying video was filmed in Margate and directed by Hermione Fenton, Freya Warsi, and Laura Lycunca. The clip follows Lyons’ silver screen character as he misguidedly attempts to contact Marilyn Monroe (despite her having been dead for 60 years) and examines the different people and circumstances he encounters in this search.
Lyons offers an overview: “Looking for Marilyn. Our main character has fallen out of an old cinema screen and is searching for Marilyn Monroe. He comes up against all the horrors and harshness of the modern world – all the while clutching the number she wrote down for him, hoping to find her soon. But this is 2022 and she exists only as a shadow, an icon…
We came up with the idea for the video one afternoon and shot it in a day the next week. Freya’s friend Hermione works on the art department for big films and she suggested we paint my face up as if I were in an old movie. I borrowed a 40’s suit from my friends at the local vintage shop and a hat from Lev Parker of Morbid Books fame, and we went walking around Margate. Freya, Hermione and Laura directed the video and made everything work properly, and Joe Edward from Goucha’s Lowly Soul Band edited it and created all the overlaying effects.
The bizarre thing was that all these synchronicities started to appear as we shot, one was that there’s a life sized porcelain statue of Marilyn on Northdown Road, which as we filmed me walking by seemed to make the camera shudder – a message from behind the curtain perhaps? Another was that we had absolutely no idea that it was the sixtieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, this made things feel very strange when we were confronted with newspaper front pages with her picture on them.
This video is an accidental homage to Ms. Monroe and all she’s done for 20th (and 21st) Century culture. I wonder if she’d have liked the song…”
Watch the video below.
Dan Lyons & The Tenants’ new album Shuttered Dreams is due out September 16 via Shaker Records. Pre-order the album here. Follow the band on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
