No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens Artist : A Lazarus Soul Label : Bohemia Records A Lazarus Soul’s follow-up to 2019′s lauded The D They Put Between the R & L is a really interesting confection, with Brian Brannigan, Anton Hegarty, Julie Bienvenu and Joe Chester reuniting for a reflective, ruminative record. Written in large part on Brannigan’s long walks across the Bog of Allen and the Royal Canal, there is a real sense of salve here, and a desire for the clarifying comfort to be found in nature. The title of No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens was inspired by a line from The Fall’s Psykick Dancehall (“my garden is made of stone”), and there is some familiar Mark E Smith- or Cathal Coughlan-like fury weaving its way through songs such as Black Maria, which explores police brutality amid driving drums and swinging bass, and a swagger that perhaps nods to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
Brannigan’s voice, so strident and clear, is well-served by many of the sonic flourishes on this record, such as The Flower I Flung into Her Grave which contains a scuzzy guitar-driven wildness. Influenced in part by the equal wildness of Marina Carr’s 1998 play The Bog of Cats – it harnesses a morbidly dark and quixotic tone that is complemented by something like Wildflowers, which sounds like The Smiths crashing into The Pogues at a Dubliners concert. It has an old-fashioned stomping warmth, with glowing harmonium and coaxing, jangly guitar inviting us to a stor.
