A Lazarus Soul

Named Best Irish Album of 2014 by Paul Page http://www.betweenthebars.net/best-albums-2014/, as well being included in the 10 Best Irish Albums of 2014 on Newstalk Radio https://www.newstalk.ie/The-ten-best-Irish-albums-of-2014, in the Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/music-reviews/best-irish-albums-of-the-year-30831782.h... and RTE 2fm by Dan Hegarty http://www.rte.ie/2fm/dan-hegarty-the-alternative/, A Lazarus Soul are wrapping up a sparkling year and are already looking forward to hit 2015 with already on the horizon a tour in the USA and Canada, including their participation at Canadian Music Week 2015.

The A Lazarus Soul frontman lays his heart bare in the band’s latest offering ’Last Of The Analogue Age’ an eight-track masterpiece, a twisted love letter to his past and his future. The Dublin band’s fourth album also gives a voice to the country’s dispirited, those left behind on dole queues, the missing, the - young and old - who have been ravaged by the system.

Former Ten Speed Racer & current guitarist with the Waterboys, Joe Chester has been a key factor in Brannigan’s sonic liberation. A singer songwriting maestro famed for his lush, layered production, Chester nurtured Brannigan’s appetite for new ideas, fresh tics and weirder kicks.
Together they treaded murky waters with original member Anton Hegarty on bass and Julie Bienvenu on drums.

“The current A Lazarus Soul lineup came together for a tribute night, to my heroes, The Fall,” Brannigan explains. “With only an hour’s rehearsal, with only bass, drums, and guitar, it was one of the most powerful units I’d ever stood in front of. This inspired us to drop the synths, the sequencers and where possible the plug-ins were switched for guitar effect pedals.
Recording this way meant the words and music had to be the strongest we’ve ever written. We started using analogue tape for first time in years and honestly, after the initial sessions we were left scratching our heads.”

Cohesive and complex, this album is full of strange flourishes and nuanced arrangements, from the mysterious and masterful ‘This Divided Kingdom’ to the heart swelling ‘Mercury Hit A High’ and the wrenching lament of ‘Last Seen’. Brannigan’s deeply sonorous voice bellows confidently on the opening track ‘Midday Class’, a modern anarchist ballad which sets the tone for the album and is sure to move the most hardened of Irish souls with song and sentiment. Reggae hero Lee Scratch Perry mixed ‘Ghettoblaster’ pushing the track into bolder, foot-stomping territory.

“The stories are of those on the fringes of society, of lost or lack of opportunities. Those born in to a cycle of  just getting by and whatever your beliefs are. Why people fall on hard times, only a small
percentage ever escape this loop. This is also about the last generation of whom it wasn’t the expectation to go to college, but the exception.

 I look at the Leaving Cert as a cross roads in my life. I was the youngest of nine and I felt it wasn’t fair for me to go to college. I should be handing up to help my parents. I began a cycle of working
in factories, however deep down my only desire was to make music. Everyone around me thought this was a waste of time so I kept it to myself. Down through the years, I’ve funded my own records but I always referred to myself a general operative and I never had the belief to say, ‘I am a songwriter, this is my place in life.”

Formed in 2001, A Lazarus Soul’s back catalogue boasts ‘ALSRecord’ (2001),‘Graveyard of Burnt out Cars (2007),’ and  ‘Through a Window in the Sunshine Room’ (2011). Brannigan unleashed his voice again when he heard his old school, Patrician College in Finglas, was closing down.

“I went back to those crossroads with this group of incredible musicians. We set up on the stage of the assembly hall where I sat my Leaving Cert and ironically it was set up for the exams.
“The light poured through windows and bathed the hall in glorious sunlight. The band struck up the first chords of ‘The Future’s Not Ours.'