This is the 13th episode in 2024 and it focuses on A Lazarus Soul. It links back to two earlier episodes: Episode 45 was with Pat Barrett of The Hedge Schools and Episode 46 with Joe Chester.

Pat was an early member of A Lazarus Soul and Joe was also in The Hedge Schools and is a member of A Lazarus Soul and has also produced all of the band’s albums to date.

2024 has proved to be an incredible year for A Lazarus Soul, their 6th album, No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens was a huge achievement for the band. I recently placed it No. 1 in my own Top 10 Irish Albums of 2024 list. For this episode of the podcast we’re going back to their previous album, The D They Put Between the R & L from 2019.

A lot of people will be surprised by the fact that A Lazarus Soul have been around for over 20 years, in fact it’s not far off a quarter of a century. Formed by Brian Brannigan after his band Sub Assembly ended they put out their first mini-album titled - alazarussoulrecord - in 2001.

At the time in A Lazarus Soul, Brannigan was joined by Ten Speed Racer’s Pat and John Barrett. Darragh Shanahan played drums. Joe Chester, also from Ten Speed Racer, produced the album and has remained a constant presence producing the band since, though he didn’t officially join the band until 2014’s The Last of the Analogue Age.

Graveyard of Burnt Out Cars was the band’s second album and it came out in 2007. This time Brannigan was backed by members of Future Kings of Spain: Anton Hegarty on bass, Joey Wilson and guitars and Bryan McMahon on keyboards. Fin O’Leary from Mexican Pets was behind the drumkit. Joe Chester again produced.

‘The Day I Disappeared’ from the album was released as a radio single and its cover photograph of Martin Cahill dragged A Lazarus Soul into a media skirmish when the tabloid press, sensing a story, accused them of glamourising violence. Brannigan told Phantom FM that the song, “actually condemns violence and it’s just meant to spark debate and look at the whole gang culture and how we just swallow it every week in the newspapers.”

Album number three came in 2011, Through A Window In the Sunshine Room, and this time Brannigan was joined once again by Anton Hegarty and Joe Chester. Rollerskate Skinny’s Ger Griffin and Sunbear’s Martin Kelly also contributed, and Pat Barrett also returned to sing on a few of the songs.

Things really changed later that year. On 11 November 2011 A Lazarus Soul played a tribute to The Fall’s Mark E. Smith in The Joinery in Smithfield. For that gig Brannigan was joined by Anton Hegarty on bass, Julie Bienvenu on drums and Joe Chester on guitar, and this is the line-up that has stayed in place since.

The D They Put Between the R & L was the next album, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s the album wherein Brannigan well and truly found his voice. At the time he said that a few years earlier he had gotten an idea. “What if I’d never heard any music,” he asked himself. “What would my voice sound like.” This gave rise to a rethink about how he was singing and an eventual acceptance to sing in his own authentic Dublin voice.

“It’s a very different record, there’s a bit more of a folky element to it.” Brannigan also said at the time, he continued, “These songs, to me, sound like modern old-world ballads if that makes sense.”

It made complete sense and the album really connected with people. That summer they opened for Damien Dempsey in the Iveagh Gardens and by the end of the year they sold out their own gig in Whelan’s. 2019 was a real turning point for the band and The D They Put Between the R & L is the album we’re going to focus on in this episode.

In Episode 46 Joe Chester told said to me: “I’ve been making records with for A Lazarus Soul for over 20 years. For 17 or 18 of those years anytime someone put a microphone in front of me I was telling them how Brian Brannigan was the best songwriter in Ireland.”

Joe continued: “I don’t know if people thought I was posturing but I wasn’t, I was serious. It’s been an amazing experience to see everyone catch up.”

2024 may be the year in which people caught up, but the momentum really started to built back in 2019.

For Further Listening/Reading/Viewing:

The D They Put Between the R & L is available on Bandcamp.

No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens, A Lazarus Soul’s latest album, is also available on Bandcamp.

Below: The press release from the Temple Bar Music Centre gig that I mentioned in my introduction to this episode:

Turn
supported by
A Lazarus Soul
Thursday 30 August 2001. 7.30pm - €7.50 / €6
TEMPLE BAR MUSIC CENTRE

And finally…
Brian mentions in the podcast that ‘Long Balconies’ was inspired by a film by Joe Lee. Inside Out Outside In, Stories from O’Devaney Gardens, is Lee’s documentary about life and change in O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin.