a lazarus soul are channelling the “wildness of the human spirit” in their long-awaited new album, No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens.
A follow-up to 2019’s The D They Put Between the R & L, the new LP came together after the group, composed of Brian Brannigan, Anton Hegarty, Julie Bienvenu and Joe Chester, half of whom live in Ireland, half in France, headed to Rennes in France for a whirlwind recording session of largely improvised Brannigan-penned tracks.
“It was circumstance,” a lazarus soul frontman Brian Brannigan told the Irish Mirror. “Me and Tony went over and we went to Rennes, we were like Anneka Rice trying to get to Rennes, we had to travel a long way to get there! We went to Miracle Studios, a little studio in an industrial estate in Rennes and we had it for four or five days.
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“I didn't know what anybody was going to play, whatever they played went down. One of the songs G.I.M, we spent, I think maybe, my memory isn't great, but it was less than two hours, an hour left to go with the session.
“They hadn't heard the song, I just showed them on guitar and they started playing it and we got it down in about 20 minutes, bar I rerecorded the vocals because I hadn't finished the lyrics, but bar that the song was done in that time and left that way. We left all the flaws in, the mistakes. We made it like an old-fashioned record.”
The album title is a nod to a line from The Fall’s tune Psykick Dancehall: “my garden is made of stone” - aptly named as this line-up of the group came together for a 2011 tribute to the English post-punk legends.
“I’ve been a huge Fall fan for about 30 years,” Brian said. “When Mark E Smith died, I was devastated, I couldn’t listen to them for about two years, so I started reading books.
“I was reading I think the book was Excavate and it's kind of an ephemera of The Fall and Mark E Smith’s lyrics, and I’d heard that so many times but when I read the lyric, it just blew my mind.
“When you see it written down I just thought ‘What an amazing line’, and I just got up like an evangelist and started singing ‘No flowers grow on cement gardens’ and I went right that’s the title!”
Musically, No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens embodies a band on fire, relishing their reunion with a fiercely honest celebration of wildness and the human spirit.
“There's the wildness of the human spirit,” Brannigan said about the album. “The celebration of wildness. The Flower I Flung has a character Hester Swain from a play By The Bog Of Cats and she's a wild woman, and wildflowers as well I think is a celebration of wildness and the human spirit.”
Brannigan penned much of the lyrics for the record while taking long walks along the Royal Canal and the Bog of Allen, where he would sing at the top of his voice as he wandered along.
“A lot of stuff comes when I'm wandering and it just sparks an idea,” Brannigan explained. “I find nature really inspiring. More in the morning there is no one around, you can go down a train of thought, I find I have really intense writing in the morning, and I can get lots done.
“A lot of lyrics are written that way, but I go mad if I'm left in walls and if I spend a day in the house I go around the bends, I like to get out and just wander, be free.
“The bog is great as well, you meet nobody on the bog it's really kind of sparse and it's lonely out there, I love it, you never meet anybody and I sing at the top of my voice as well. There’s a river by the Bog of Allen called the River Slate, I wander down there and I sing, I can just bellow.
“I very rarely meet someone and if I meet someone, I frighten the shite out of them, I very rarely meet anyone. That’s where I practice as well, I love doing that, just walking and singing to the trees.”
a lazarus soul will join Matt Johnson-fronted UK post-punks The The for a huge concert at Collins Barracks later this year. Brannigan admitted this show is a big one, owning to a obsession with the outfit from his youth.
“I'm a huge huge fan,” he said. “In my teenage years, I was obsessed with The The so much. Matt Johnson, absolutely love him. This is a big gig for me!”
You can catch a lazarus soul on tour this autumn, kicking off a string of shows at Coughlan's, Cork on August 23, Cleere's, Kilkenny on August 24, and supporting English post-punk icons The The at Collins Barracks, Dublin on August 25 before closing off with a Vicar Street show on October 26. a lazarus soul’s long-anticipated return, No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens, is out now on all streaming platforms.
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