While some songwriters aim for the vague and universal, Brian Brannigan of A Lazarus Soul aims squarely at the particular. On this record he sings songs about lost innocence (“There’s no relief from the clutches of the childhood thief,” he warbles on ‘Through a Window’), the corrosive effects of wealth (“We had more class when we had not two pennies,” he opines on ‘A Penthouse View’), and the need to protect the local environment (“Strawberry beds forever,” he proclaims, channelling John Lennon, on ‘Save our Greenbelt’).
Brannigan delivers this worldview in a wavering vocal, sporting for good measure his real accent and backed by some lovely harmonies borrowed from Leonard Cohen’s later records. There are arpeggiated guitars, bombastic synth washes, wandering keyboard lines and dodgy drum machines (all meshed together by the excellent Joe Chester). Sound-wise, it sometimes resembles a post-apocalyptic, Dublin-bedsit-based Pet Shop Boys, sometimes the big guitar bands of the ‘80s (even U2). For the most part it’s like nothing else you’ve heard before. Thematically it’s an important and quietly defiant record: a soothing and inspiring pop soundtrack to ruin. “The buildings rising higher while the city is on fire,” Brannigan sings on ‘A Penthouse View’, “There’s nothing you can do but observe.” Fair enough, I suppose – as long as you go on to write great songs about it.