A Lazarus Soul – No Flowers Grow In Cement Gardens
by Killian Laher

We are truly in a golden age for Irish music, between hip-hop, doom folk and modern rock, not to mention all the emerging artists playing with the folk idiom.  One band playing a mixture of rock and folk for many years is A Lazarus Soul, who released their follow-up album to 2019’s The D Put Between The R and the L a few weeks ago.  Initially, this album passed me by, having assumed (wrongly) that it could not be as good as its predecessor.  I was taken aback by the album.  While their previous album was probably their most folk-influenced to date, the band’s sound has swung back to more guitar-oriented sounds this time.  The album opens with the arresting Black Maria (sorry), with Brian Brannigan singing over foreboding-sounding drums and bass.

Big bright strident guitar chords introduce The Flower I Flung Into Her Grave.  The words are extraordinary.  “We grew up the special cases, we got our love of open spaces from our days upon the bog”.  There are plenty of big, bright tunes here, the Smiths-like jangle of G.I.M., which features some of Joe Chester’s finest guitar parts.  His guitar playing, coupled with Brannigan’s devastating lyrics “young Da found on waste ground round here face down in the playground of tears” illuminate New Jewels.  The most in-your-face track is the angry strum Wildflowers, Brannigan spitting out lyrics “he blew the stash, went round the back for more, the kinda dose so pure, you’d rise six inches off the floor”.

The quieter material resonates even more.  The Dealers is a fine ballad, a tale of Bridie and Tessie, who “dreamt of a gaf with a garden in a Drumshanbo terraced estate”.  After the first verse, they add a soaring string part, which lifts the song to even greater heights.  Chester’s skyscraping guitar lines combine well with Brannigan’s soothing voice on Diver Walsh and the busy jangle of the intriguing Glass Swans.

Factory Fada (or fodder) is the longest song at nearly seven minutes and it feels like a centrepiece.  A tale of Francis Fitzgerald and Francis Maguire: “wide eyed punk potential if harnessed it could be great but no one would encourage them to dream”, two young lads who come to a sad end, over moody guitars.  It’s not only the lines Brannigan sings, but the way he delivers them, such a resonant voice.  The title track consists almost entirely of the title repeated over delicate guitars but it feels unaccountably sad, Brannigan makes it very effective by putting a different emphasis into each line.

It feels like an album that matters, with some of the finest guitar-based songs you’ll hear, combined with incredible lyrics.  Brian Brannigan is an authentic voice.  Though no longer living in Dublin, his is a uniquely Dublin voice singing about real-life concerns.  Definitely one of the albums of the year.

The Flower I Flung Into Her Grave