Interview with Brian Brannigan – A Lazarus Soul – Part 1
by Killian Laher

No More Workhorse sat down with Brian Brannigan of A Lazarus Soul to talk about their forthcoming Vicar Street show and a few other bits and pieces….

A Lazarus Soul plays Vicar Street on April 18th.

No More Workhorse: How did you get into music?

Brian Brannigan: I was singing since I was a nipper, since I was three or four.  I sang in a choir! I was mad into buying records from a really, really young age. My older brother, he would have been mad into music. We bookended the family. There were nine kids, he was the eldest. There was 20 years between us and I was the youngest. He got me really, really young, maybe five or six. He’d bring me to town and he’d be buying records. I got a love for it and never lost it. And just singing all the time, starting in bands when I was probably about seven. I’m 50 now.

NMW: Is there anything that hit you early on?

BB: The Smiths were massive. A lot of English stuff, like Cocteau Twins. Probably earlier it would have been something like Joy Division. Of course, pop music’s always been there. Me da used to buy me Smash Hits every second Thursday. It was a big event in the house. I’m mad into pop music. Shakin’ Stevens!

The Pixies had a huge impact on me. They kind of taught me that you could do something that really catchy and really strange at the same time. So yeah, they had an influence. Then a lot of the American indie scene and Sonic Youth. Overall, I think the Fall was the biggest, Mark E Smith.  I found them in my late teens and became absolutely obsessed with them.

NMW: When did you start making music?

BB: I was singing with bands since I was 17. When I did the first audition in school for the band they said, “You have to write the words”. And literally, that’s how I started writing songs. I started writing the lyrics and then, when the band fell away, I bought samplers and keyboards and I started messing about with that. For years, I wrote songs like that, drum machines and keyboards and stuff. The first band was called Flower Child, then I was in a band called Soporific. And then Sub Assembly went for a good couple of years. That was a precursor to A Lazarus Soul.

NMW: There was a bit of a gap between The D They Put Between The R and the L, and No Flowers Grow In Cement Gardens?

BB: COVID happened. I put the pause on everything. My head was all over the place when The D…. came out. Not really anything to do with it, I don’t know whether it was a midlife crisis or whatever it was, but I completely lost myself. It was really weird because it just so happened when the band was becoming popular. I wasn’t in a good head space at all. I’m trying to see it as having different personalities. I feel like my personality left me around the time of The D… Nobody knows, I went to work and did all the (normal) things. I was a dad and did all that. (But) I was in a bad way. No Flowers… was me: ‘I’m going into the wilderness and finding myself again’. I took a long time to get myself back together again. That’s what No Flowers…. is. It’s me walking on the bog and finding myself again. That’s what them songs are about.

NMW: Are you happy with the reaction that you’re having?

BB: I’m amazed by any reaction that we get. It was always a hobby since I’m 18. I wanted to go to gigs and buy records… and we played the odd gig. It was really loose as that. When The D… got a reaction and the profile was raised, we were all amazed by it. So yeah happy, nice that it happened. I’m glad it happened then as well when I was a bit older. I was wild when I was younger, so I’m glad it didn’t happen then! It’s still a very new thing. Obviously, Joe (Chester) and Julie (Bienvenu) are in France and me and Anton (Hegarty) over here. We come together every so often and play a gig and then we don’t see each other for a long time.

NMW: Did you have any of the songs written before you went to the studio?

BB: I write the tunes usually when I’m walking my dogs. I wait till I have the guts of a record before we decide to do it. What you’re hearing on the record, is just us. Me and Joe did some stuff, but I don’t think we used very much of it. Then we decided to meet in France. They (Joe Chester and Julie Bienvenu) live in Rennes now. Me and Anton went over and we got this studio in Rennes, called Miracle Studios. We went there for four or five days. What you’re hearing on that record is the first time the band played together. I hadn’t heard what they were going to do. That’s the guts of the record.

Of course, Joe shapes things once everything’s down. But a lot of that stuff was done in the studio for the first time. Everybody does their own bits of, it’s not kind of: “Don’t do that”. We just let everybody do what they do.

NMW: Are there any songs that really stand out to you at this stage?

BB: I think Factory Fada is a song I tried to write for a long, long time, and I did different versions of it. That’s the closest I got to what I wanted to write. So yeah, pretty proud of that one. And the band as well. I had something in my head and without me telling the band, they achieved it. I’m proud of it. They played amazingly on it. Steve Wickham was on that one. Yeah, I really felt that that song.

NMW: Are they real people in that song?

BB: Yeah. There’s a third person in that song that I couldn’t fit in. I came up with the idea of the two Francises and I couldn’t get the third person into it. But there’s the ghost of someone in that song that’s probably more about them. I don’t mention them, but the characteristics are in there and the spirit of him is in that song. Someone who looked after me, a fella called Willie O’Leary when I was growing up in Finglas. He’s still alive, but it’s really dedicated to him. When you’re writing a song, sometimes you bring in four or five different circumstances. Sometimes you build a person from different people. You know what I mean? But for the most part, it’s very true.

NMW: Is it words first or music first for you?

BB: I get an idea, I sing the idea, and then that usually becomes the chorus. Once I get the chorus, I know where the verse is. It’s all in my head. I used to be really embarrassed saying that, and then I realised this is great because I can walk and write songs. I literally sing out.

Black Maria was me googling where the term Black Maria came from. I just started singing, some call it Black Mareea, some call it Black Marayea. And that was that. And then instinctively, I know where the verse is going to be, just from listening to music for years. Depending, it can be really quick. Something like Factory Fada I spent a year on it, on and off.  I don’t usually spend too long on something like that. I get bored.

But yeah, the verse comes instinctively, and then I spend a long time writing words to it and then bring it to the band. I bring them back to the acoustic guitar. That grounds it. I’m not a guitarist but I can play. What I do is I’d write it from start to finish. There’s something about playing the guitar that grounds a song.

Everybody can write songs. It comes from starting to write a song… and then they get better. Our most successful song is probably Black and Amber. It’s like a nursery rhyme. Anybody could write that. I believe it’s all about having belief. That’s a really simple melody. ‘Happy Birthday’ is a very simple melody, a very pure idea. It’s the most popular song in the world. Anybody could have written that. I think it’s a belief thing. the positivity thing where you start to tell yourself, I believe in this spoken word. Some of the simplest things I’ve ever wrote are our most successful stuff. All it is, is a melody that’s catching you, that repeats.

I think it’s really simple. I think people overcomplicate that. Vic Chestnutt used to say that he grew up a singer. I do think music is magic because when people do it, because it has the power to transform a mood or move people or whatever. He (Vic Chestnutt) always said he grew up around people who wrote songs. So there was no mystique to it, he just did it. If you distil it and go back to the blues, it’s fucking simple songs, right? To find something original in a blues thing… that blows you away because that’s so simple. It has a very rigid structure.

I think people say the most amazing things all the time. I think the talent is spotting it. I spot stuff because I’m looking for it. Like our song Funeral Sessions, we actually went to a funeral and we were sitting there with my brother in Finglas.  My brother said… “if they’re on gear, they’re in town close to the gear. But if they’re on the gargle, they’re still here on the session”

So I got the line: “all the drunkards, they stay local, all the junkies go to town”. He said it. I gave him a credit on the record. People say the most amazing things.

A Lazarus Soul plays Vicar Street on April 18th.