A Lazarus Soul: 'My mind is a mess and songwriting is like a meditation for me'

An interview with Brian Brannigan and a track by track of No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens ahead of the biggest headline show of the band's career

A Lazarus Soul are Brian Brannigan, Anton Hegarty, Julie Bienvenu and Joe Chester. They released their sixth studio album - their fourth with this lineup - No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens on July 5. Split between France and Dublin, they play the biggest headline show of their career on Saturday, October 26, at Vicar Street (tickets here). I talked with Brian on TPOE 318 around the release of the record. You can listen here or read through the chat below.

It's about five years since the release of The D They Put Between the R and L. How do you look back on that album? It seemed to do really well for you.

Yeah, it was a big surprise to us. I think at the time we were playing the Grand Social, and we expected to just play one gig - the lads are in France, so we'd one gig booked. Bohemia's the label and they sent it out about two days beforehand, and my phone just started hopping. Everybody heard 'Long Balconies' and they just went crazy for it. We had finished the record and I wrote that song after it so we opened the master back up to put it on. I'd got bored with the record, because we'd been working on it so long. So this was fresh, so we just threw it on. We'd done it in about a day. I flew over to France, and we did it with Joe in about a day and didn't think too much more about it. And then when it came out, people went mad for it. It was a big surprise, a nice surprise.

It's lasted as well. People still talk about that song. Does it still feel special to you? You talk about getting bored by the album after making it - five years on, how does it feel?

We never listen to the records, I never listen to the records unless I have to. So once it's finished, it's finished. So when we come to play them, they're special because I haven't heard them in such a long time. We don't play all the time as well so there's a big excitement when we get together and play. The songs are always very fresh to us. I always imagine if you're playing all the time that you have to almost fake it; I can't imagine playing or singing songs every night, the same songs. So the fact that we come together a couple of times a year, it's always really exciting.

When was the last time you would have played together, maybe played a gig rather than practice? 

We've been together for about four hours in the last year, all four of us.

Just making music or hanging out or...?

No, just to get photos because we haven't had any photos in a couple of years. So just to get photos in the mountains. But other than that we don't. Yeah, we rarely see each other. So we get together, we do a week's rehearsal and then we gig. It can be quite daunting sometimes because you kind of forget that you're in a band, and then all of a sudden you're onstage.

Something to look forward to as well though? 

No, no, it's brilliant. It's great to have something like that in life. I's a real privilege as well when you see what's going on around the world and Palestine and that - to be able to express yourself in a song and not worry about what you're saying or just being able to play - living a life where you can play music is a big privilege.

Do you still enjoy it?

Yeah, I love it. Yeah. 

When you're thinking of making this album, and you've had like, a couple of years apart or you haven't seen the lads in a while, do you almost forget that you're the frontman of a band? Does it go to the back of your head?

All the time. Because mostly, 99.9% of it we're not even in a band. The band kinda exists in my head a lot of the time because I'm writing the album. So it's like an imaginary band for most of the time. And then it's like, 'Oh, shit, this is actually real. We gotta do it.'

Could it easily drift away? Or is there always a set thing, like, you've booked the time to go to France or...?

Oh it could easily drift away, yeah... we could easily not do it. Yeah, absolutely. I think as I get older, I could definitely easily not do it. I like watching Netflix these days.

So when you're writing the songs, are they just coming to you slowly, drips and drabs? Or do you have like,'OK, it's been five years, we'll release the album in 2024?' Or are you thinking like that at all?

No, I think when we feel like we have our record, the ideas start to come to me. I get a melody and an idea, like a line and usually the idea of what the song is going to be comes with that. And then I go walking with me dogs all the time and develop them (the songs). But it happens really slowly. I don't force myself to do it. So sometimes I could write a song over a year. I just keep coming back to it. Not all the time. But when I have a little bit of headspace, I'll come back and work on it. So when you have the magic number normally for a record is 10 tracks. With Covid, I wrote a good bit more this time because there was a lot of free time. I think with this record, I wrote a record and then I thought I was working on another record and the original batch of songs I wrote together I found maybe a little bit boring. So I pulled some of the new songs I was working on into it like 'Black Mariah' and 'GIM' and Joe was like, 'Yeah, they need that so.'

Tell me how the band works. We've talked about France a little bit; so Joe and Julie live over there?

They live in Rennes. So Julie's from France originally. After Last of the Analogue Age, they moved over to France. They were originally living in Nice. So Joe does be over quite a bit because he does his own stuff - he gigs over here so I get to see Joe much more than I get to see Julie. Julie is a teacher so we work on holidays and midterms. We're all working.

And so you head over there. Do you treat it as a holiday? Do you treat it as work? Is the place really nice, Rennes?

I love Nice. I was raging when they moved out of Nice, it's lovely and it's really handy to get to as well. I've only been over there I think I was in Nice twice and we were in Rennes once. With The D (They Put Between R and L), we made it between here and France. So I went over to France and we recorded me vocals and we did a lot of stuff over there. And Tony recorded the stuff here, but me and Tony went over for this album for about five days to Rennes. It was a bit of a holiday as well. We go and we do a day's recording and then go out at night for a few beers then.

Do you see it as your band? Do you see it as equal parts? Is that something that you actually think about that much?

No. I don't really think about that that much. The songs always come from me. But the songs sound terrible when I play them. The band are very, very talented. They've spent their lives honing their skills. For this record, we went in a room, I didn't know what they were going to play, and we only had four days, so whatever we put down is what we put down. So it's very democratic in that way. They're all incredible players and what they've done, like I don't direct what they do. I might say if I don't like something, but I don't really direct what they do, what they play. I think what they've done to some of the songs on this record is unbelievable. 

The album is called No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens. It's named after a line from the Fall's 'Psychic Dance Hall' song, is that right? 

Yeah. I was and am a Fall fan. When he died I was about a quarter-century into the Fall. He's kinda like Liam Gallagher; Mark, when he was getting interviewed, I'd put on interviews and he'd cheer me up. He was always the person that lifted me. And I was really sad when he died. For about two years, I couldn't listen to them. I started reading books to get into them - the books are very, very funny. And I started reading books again. And I read the line, 'my garden's made of stone'. I was sitting out the back garden and it was a nice summer evening. Fireworks went off in me head when I read the line; I'd heard it hundreds of thousands of times and then I just got up and started singing 'No flowers grow in cement gardens', like some kind of evangelist out the back. I just sang it over and over and over again. And I'd wanted to get a sample from Lee Scratch Perry for about 10 years. I'd tried emailing him and I went, 'This is it! This is the sample!' So I emailed him and I got a bounceback. And then a couple of days later, his wife contacted me and said he'd give me the sample.

That's great, that's nice. Yeah, the Fall are a band that you go through phases with. They've released so much music over the decades.

Yeah, incredible amount of music. I'm a huge fan but I couldn't even tell you a chronological, where the album's come; You can kinda dip in and out. The first batch of what he did, the early stuff in the late 70s is incredible. Kinda reminds me a little bit like Beefheart. But it's its own thing. It's chaotic. I just think he was an amazing mind, a great poet, the way he thought about things is just incredible. And then the 80s stuff, and then he of went into a dip. Then it was the speed years and then he came back and did some great stuff in the 90s. You can dip in and out. The last couple of albums weren't great, but an amazing legacy to leave.

So you can remember and pinpoint where you were when you got that title, when you are singing it like an evangelist. Where in the process of making the album does that come? Is that the spark that lights everything that follows or is it late in the process?

Not really, it's the thing that pulls it together and makes it feel like it's gonna be a record. Up to then you've just got a batch of songs and you're trying to find some threads that pull the songs together. I always had the cover from the start... the Gregory Dunne photograph... I seen that, I didn't know I could have it but I'd seen it and wanted that to be the cover very early on. But the title brings it together.

Is there a common thread running through the album? You've got a whole cast of characters throughout, vagabonds and ne'er-do-wells wells, and dreamers and more besides, is it that cast of characters, are you seeing a whole village in this album, or is there another thread that you're thinking of? 

I don't kinda look at it that way. There's definitely a theme of nature, the wildness in nature and maybe the wildness of people and human nature as well.

No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens track by track

1. The Black Maria

I was wondering where the word 'Black Maria' came from. And it turned out that it was a US thing. So it turned out that they called it the 'Black Maria' in the US and I think it was based on a woman basically. And then I just started singing it like a nursery rhyme, 'some call it Black Maria, some call it Black Mariah'. And that's where it came from.

It's about police brutality?

Yeah, it was. I found out that the US police force were trained by the IDF. What could possibly go wrong there, the Israeli Defence Forces training a police force in America? Yeah, that's where the spark came from. And then, yeah, I was thinking about some of the protests, like the Occupy movement, where people are standing up to the government and the police are heavy handed. And yeah, looking at America and of seeing the rise of the far right - and we're always a couple of years behind. And you can see that happening over here now. And also how softly softly the approach seems to be to the far right and their violence towards people in libraries and marches. If you take the water (protest) marches, how violent they were towards people then as well. It's not Cop Killer or Angel Delight by Fatima Mansions. It's a little bit cartoonish as well. 

You've always sung about societal issues, I suppose. Is this a political song? 

Again, I wouldn't take it too serious. There's other songs on the record that are much more serious than that. I kind of see it as being lighthearted. I sing it like a nursery rhyme. It's one of my favourite singles.

You've got that long 45-second intro, it's like you're almost preparing yourself for what's to come.

Yeah, that was Joe. I don't know what he was doing. He does a reel to reel thing. I don't understand this stuff. But he has a reel to reel analog tape recorder. And I think he does testing on it with these bleeps. It's at the start of the D as well. And I think he was just using the effects on that. And he created it. Yeah, it's great. 

You're just like, 'let him at it'.

Oh, absolutely. Joe - especially with this record - he did so much on his own over in France. He records it, he mixes it, he masters it, he plays on it, arranges it, he does everything. I just let him at it. There's a great trust between us. It's difficult because when you're in the studio - the other records we made, I was there, so it takes 20 minutes to say 'try that, try that, try that, oh that's it' - but when you're sending it over emails; like at one stage, I think I had an Excel spreadsheet, and it was like, 'try this, if this doesn't work, go to this'. It was getting to a ridiculous stage. Well, mostly it work very, very on the same page. And as well as that, I mean, the whole idea about having a band is that you want everybody's input and their personality on it. So it mightn't be something that you would come up with, and this record wouldn't have been something that I would have come up with. It's the four of us together.

We won't talk much about Covid but is that Excel spreadsheet a direct result of just being stuck here, not being able to go over there as much?

I think I've been over to France maybe three times all together, maybe four. But no, that was afterwards. Joe gets to do his thing when he gets to do his thing. So I might be in work, in my work mode sending him a spreadsheet; 'here, try all that stuff'. It takes a couple of days to do stuff. He'd work on stuff, and then you'd have to upload it and send it over. So it was quite a slow process. It was definitely one of the most challenging records we've made. And Covid as well played a big part. It just delayed us doing anything for two years.

How did that compare it to say the first ALS album almost - or over - 20 years ago?

Yeah, it would've been around 2000ish, yeah. 

Was that just four lads in a room playing?

We actually rented a house. Trevor Hutchinson, out of the Waterboys, he had a house on Iona Road. Joe knew him, I didn't know Joe. He started walking with 10 Speed Racer who were mates of mine. I'd heard an album that he made by Nina Hines, and I just said, 'Jesus, I'd love to make a record with this fella.' And he just happened to come into me circle. So he knew Trevor and he got the house and the studio. And we just moved in there for a month. Trevor was on tour. 

No Excel spreadsheets? 

No, it was very analog. And he gave us money. I cleaned his house, I scrubbed his house for him while he was away. While Joe was doing his stuff, I was sweeping and cleaning. And he knocked some money off for me cleaning his house.

So a little bit different to back then, this album. 

Yeah I didn't know Joe that well, I don't think we get on great initially. And Joe wasn't playing in the band then. It was Pat Barrett and John Barrett and Derek Shanahan. Then there was a second iteration with the Future Kings of Spain and Finn O'Leary. And all the time Joe was producing and obviously playing on the records because he's a multi instrumentalist. So we'd always say, 'Here, you put something on. Yeah that's deadly.' And we'd leave it. So he's always played on the records. But it wasn't until after Through a Window in the Sunshine Room that I asked him to play gigs with us. 

Good friends now. 

I mean, we're friends. 20 years now. We're best mates. 

Just finally on ‘Black Maria’, it's one of your heaviest songs, do you think? 

Yeah it started off like a PJ Harvey rhythmy-esque thing when I was playing it on the guitar. And then I gave it to the lads. I think there's bits of the Cramps in there. I think this album is very much influenced by the Fall even though I think people only say something sounds like the Fall if someone sounds like Mark E Smith, but actually, musically, I think this sounds very much like 1985, 86, Nation's Saving Grace Fall. It has that feel to it.

Do you think that a lot of the guitar bands, particularly in Ireland now, would you compare them to the Fall? I know that Gilla Band would probably say that they're really influenced by the Fall. Do you think whether bands know it or not, that the Fall have had that much of an influence on things?

Yeah, I think anybody that came after the Fall is inspired by the Fall. Not everybody but yeah, they had a huge impact on especially the indie scene. His attitude, even tries to mimic that attitude. Like, Girl Band, yeah I can hear little bits but I'd only really say someone was ripping off the Fall if they sounded like Mark. There's little bits of that in Girl Band, but jeez, they're an extraordinary bond live, wow. 

2.'The Flower I Flung into her Grave’

This is an interesting one. Is it inspired by the myth of Medea? You sing about the young Kilbride and Hester Swain and days upon the bog.

It's a play by Marina Carr called By the Bog of Cats. Me and me Missus go into the Abbey a couple of times a year. We get the preview tickets, the cheap seats. We drive in, there's a spot on Gardiner Street that you can park after seven. And then we go in to see the play and then we'll get a slice of DeFontaines pizza on the way home. It's always Tuesday nights because my mother in law used to mine my kid and she does bingo on Mondays and bingos was sacrilegious, so it was always Tuesdays. So we seen the Bog of Cats one time by Marina Carr; blew our absolute minds. I bought a book of Marina Carr plays, I read them very often. And I'm obsessed with her now. That was a long time ago but I'm obsessed with her now. Her last play, I brought my daughter to her first play in the Abbey, Audrey, our Sorrow, just absolutely incredible. So it's actually the story of By the Bog of Cats. I think a lot of her plays are based on Greek tragedy. I don't know whether that one is or not. But I think it could be based on a Greek tragedy.

And so how does making a song of it come about? Is it just you reading the play? Are you thinking actively about making a song In response to this?

Yeah, I could be reading something or watching (something). Either they just come into me head when I'm trying to figure out the world when I'm walking or I might watch a doc; I find documentaries very inspiring. Or if I'm reading, I find the written word very inspiring. So usually, I just sing out. I'd just be walking around and something will come into my head, a line will come into my head and I just sing it out. It's always vocal melodies that they come about.

Just recording into your phone, then?

I would then record it into the phone because I've got the memory of an absolute goldfish. So literally, I could sing something for four hours and if I don't record it, or I forget to record it, it's gone. I've one little chance in the morning, the next morning; sometimes I wake back up with it in me head, but other than that, it's gone. I've lost loads of songs. So yeah, straight away I record.

Notebooks as well?

I've got the worst handwriting. I hate my handwriting. I don't write anything. I don't like people asking me to sign records or anything. Yeah, phone recordings. Most of them are terrible.

Was it a challenging song or did you find it easy enough to come up with...?

I think when you have a very definite idea about what you're writing about, I find the songs that you don't know what they're about to be much more difficult because you don't know what's gonna come next. When you have a story and a narrative, it's much easier. If I knew exactly what I'm writing about, I find that really easy. If a song is just in me head and I haven't got a clue what it's about, I could go on for yonks. I've a few of them at the moment. I haven't got a clue what they're about, and I don't know what the next line is going to be because I don't know what it's about. So if I have a story, it's much easier.

And have you been into the Abbey recently?

The last one was Audrey, Our Sorrow. I got invited to the premiere of it and I was sitting back a little bit and I think I might have forgot me glasses. I couldn't see it that much. But I went back with me daughter for the last day of it and it was absolutely mind blowing. I just think she's a genius.

Are you a fan of theatre in general or is it just that the Abbey does something for you, or those plays by Marina Carr do something for you?

I grew up in Finglas and I think the theatre was very inaccessible to people but my brother used to bring me to the Passion Machine plays. They would have been in the Project Arts Centre. From very, very young, I taught this was an amazing medium. And I found it very accessible. I think people are intimidated by the theatre. But I was brought at a very young age to stuff like that; Roddy Doyle, some of his early plays, they would have done some of them. I used to go to the Gate which I find a little bit intimidating, it's a little bit dressy-up kind of place. Where the Abbey, especially in the last maybe 15 years, it's a very cool place, very relaxed. But I used to go to the Project Arts Centre and the City Arts Centre and see theatre in there as well. I go to the festivals, I've seen some incredible stuff, just an incredible medium.

3. The Dealers

And so just down the corner around from the Gate and around from the Abbey, we're onto Moore Street and I think this is where the Dealers is set, track number three on the album. You're singing about Bridie and Tessie, two dealers who sell knocked off Reebok along cobbled streets and they dream of a gaff with a garden and a Drumshambo terraced estate Tell me about Bridie and Tassie, these two dreamers and dealers.

Me Ma, Peggy Branniganm, god rest her, used to bring me in every Saturday so we were in Finglas, used to get the 40C into town. I'm the youngest of nine, and we used to just go in and get the fruit and we'd get meat - there's twins that used to have a butcher's on the corner of Moore Street - and the odd time, if we're very lucky, she'd let me get a single in Dolphin Discs and that's where I started collecting records - out of the bargain box at Dolphin Discs.

Can you remember the first one? 

My brother, god rest him, was a mad music fan and there was 20 years between us and he used to bring me into town as well; on a Sunday when they were bringing me to Mass, he used to snatch me off me Ma and Da and bring me into the pub. He'd sit in the pub drinking all day. But he'd bring me down the Dandelion Market. I had two records. One was 'Dippety Doh Dippety Day' by the Smurfs - I would've been five, like - and definitely one of the first ones was 'Bright Eyes' by Art Garfunkel. So I had a goo for records from about five.

So is it fun nostalgia, good memories that you're thinking of when you're thinking about those times and those people?

Yeah, I think one of me favourite lines in it is 'wandering where's the work day dirt, sky blue Saturday'. To me, me youth, I remember, kinda like today, it's a little bit breezy with blue skies and cloud and I associate Saturdays in me head with that kind of thing and being in Moore Street and the vibrancy of it and that real crystal clear Dublin accent and the stories that the dealer would tell ya. I suppose there is a little bit of nostalgia there but it's still a very vibrant place. My daughter goes into the African hairdressers to get her hair done in there now and again. So I'd be there still quite a bit and it's multicultural now, it's a beautiful place. It's really vibrant and I feel alive in that street. There's great history in it as well.

Where did you grow up? 

Finglas west. And I'm always walking so I used to walk into town. I'd often walk in, it's four miles. Have a few pints, see a gig and walk home. You'd often see me wandering through Cabra and Phibsboro, places like that.

Moore Street is in the news, they're talking about doing it up. Do you pay attention to that? Do you worry about what they mean by regeneration of the area?

Yeah, I think they're talking about if they do it, they'll close the dealers down and I don't think the dealers will get back if they do that. I think the dealers feel that way too. It's probably a dying tradition as well, but it's a place that I think should be preserved. I think we're losing a lot of the soul of the city. Something like that that has a cultural significance should be given funding to keep it, to do whatever they have to to keep it open. And not only the dealers but the historical quarter down there as well, from the GPO from 1916, where O'Rahilly got shot, the square where they surrendered - all those places should be...

They don't do enough with it.

No, it's sacrilegious to just build a shopping mall there. That's mental.

Are the dealers there so much fewer and less than they would have been when you were 5, 10 years old?

I think so. It's definitely much more multicultural now which I love and I think the Africans there have kept it open and they come down and they buy a lot of stuff down there as well. And there's a lot of hair shops and phone shops and stuff like that. There's some families that would have been there from years ago but there's definitely less of them. I allude to it in the songs but I think it was a necessity back then, the fruit and veg was cheaper. I think people have gone to Lidl and places like that now, they don't necessarily go there (to the street markets). We used to get our Doc Martens and monkey boots and even runners - knocked-off runners - down by the back of the Ilac. Back then it was a necessity to do that. Someone was actually telling me that they got monkey boots and I was so insulted when I got monkey boots. I wanted Docs when I was younger. 

Tell me what monkey boots are.

They're kinda like working boots, but from talking to someone the other day, they were cooler than I thought they were, but I wanted a pair of Doc Martens.

Did you ever get them?

In me teens, yeah, eventually.

4. G.I.M.

This is another about police brutality?

No. A Garda Information Message is when there's a threat to your life, a credible threat to you life. Someone gets issued with one of them. I won't say too much about it but someone I know knocked up to the gaff here in a bulletproof vest. He got involved in something that was out of his control. It worked out alright in the end and we got a song out of it (laughs). It's a humorous song, got a singalong chorus.

It's a funny kind of a chorus as well. I'm just imagining the crowd singing along to 'Garda Information Messenger'.

Yeah, it's definitely a tongue-in-cheek song. Yeah, that's me favourite song on the record. I wrote it near the end and I hadn't finished the lyric. And when we were in France, we'd got about - I don't know how long but in me head it's about an hour - and I said to them, 'I have one more song,' pulled out a guitar, played it, and then they took it off and we recorded it in less than an hour.

Just like ‘Long Balconies’ by the sounds of it.

Well 'Long Balconies' I went over with a song that was from start to finish and it just didn't work so much. We went out on the beer and we were really hungover the next day and we couldn't get it to work. It should have been something really simple and we couldn't get it to work. And it came together at the last minute, but I had a very definite song. This one I went in, I knew the length of it and I knew the verse and the choruses and the makeup of it, but I hadn't finished the lyrics. So it was literally, 'Have a listen to this,' they were like, 'Yeah, that's cool.' We put it down, the band put it together really quickly. And then when I came home and they sent it to me, I was like, 'Oh, that's deadly.' Joe came back over here and I did new lyrics for it and finished it and then I talked my daughter into singing on it as well. Ethiopian Lilywhite putting on her best Dublin accent.

Is that the first time that she's done that? 

Absolutely. She wouldn't do it with Joe here, so we just recorded on the phone and sent that over to him and he mixed it into the track. Joe says it sounds like Fall meets Motown or something like that, with a singalong chorus about getting shot.

That's why it's your favourite song on the album, cos she she's on it?

Yeah, absolutely. It's a real pleasure to be able to have her on a song. And I love when songs come together really easy, because it usually takes me a long time to write songs. I kind of don't want to hear them again when I finish them, songs like 'Factory Fada'. Whereas this came together really easily; the easy songs would be my favourite because you can enjoy them more then yourself.

5. New Jewels

This is a long one. I feel like we could talk about every line on this song. It's about the people left behind after a tragic event? 

Yeah, it's about drugs and how they ravage communities. And it was inspired by - I seen a documentary on Ballymun and one of the things that inspired the song was, do you know the way when we were in school, and if you got bullied, you can come home and you can get away from it. And now with cyberbullying, you can't because everybody's on the phone online and people's lives are lived out there so they can't get away from it. And one of the things about the documentary that I never taught before was that when someone has a heroin addiction, or a crack addiction now, they all have mobile phones and when the drugs come in, they can get them on their mobile, they have their numbers on speed dial and I just thought, especially with the housing crisis, and people not being able to move and not being able to rent somewhere, if you're stuck in a place, you can't get out of that now. Unless maybe you become homeless, like people can't just decide now, 'I'm going to move somewhere else.' Someone having your number on speed dial on the phone, how do you get away from that addiction? it's so, so hard now. Even if you went into treatment centres, you still have to go back to the same place; it's like someone in domestic violence. If you're in a terrible situation now, it's really hard with the housing crisis and the price of rent to actually get out of it now. So that was the inspiration, thinking on top of everything else, having this addiction to some of the worst drugs, people have your phone number and can contact you really easy. It came to me - I was really hungover and I turned on the news and someone had been shot outside my ma's house in Finglas where me sister lives and I look after me sister. So I flew up to make sure she was alright, but she'd slept through it and there was a forensic tent up just down the road, and the idea just came the next day. I think I just wrote it all in one go.

It's like a melting pot. And then you just get that spark that you need. 

Yeah absolutely. You've got a lot of ideas floating around and then something hits you and that's the focus, you're into it then.

I do like how a hangover seems to come into it a good bit. I'm imagining the feeling where these things are going around in your head the next morning. It's not the fear but it's probably something close to it.

Yeah, I get really vulnerable. You could probably call it the fear, but I think it's a vulnerability. I never worry about dying, except the day after I drank and I got this terrible fear of death. Some of that vulnerability, I think, is great for writing. A lot of the songs I've wrote, some of the best songs I've wrote, have come like that. I don't like to be in that state, but if I'm really hungover, I try and write, work on something. Mostly I don't want to but an odd time, a really, really good song would come from that.

As long as you're not thinking like, 'I have to be hungover to write a song.' That's a tough way to be.

No, I have a complete aversion to hangovers. I don't get that way much anymore. I used to drink a lot and get very, very hungover where I'd get sick for the whole next day. But it has to be a balance thing. I had to be functioning to be able to write. But anyway, I don't go out of me way to do that. But just down through the years, some of me best songs came that way. 

6. Wildflowers

We talked about hangovers - this one is about a bit of a bender going on, featuring three characters, Ten Past, Shroney O'Brien, and Sawn-Off. A three-day bender - oof!

I used to work in a place in Coolock and there was this really tall fella with shocking red hair and Simo Kennedy - I dunno which way his head was - but Simo called him Ten Past cos his head was slightly to the left. And he went out with a girl who was very short and her legs were a bit stumpy and he called her Sawn-Off. So used to say to me, 'Brian here come Ten Past and Sawn-Off.' And I was like, 'That's going in a song.’ It was a long time ago, but… Them names stuck with me. And I tried them in different songs but this song seemed to be the right song for them. Shroney O'Brien is based on a friend of mine that I go to festivals with. 

'Wildflowers' and 'New Jewels', they're so dense, both with characters and with ideas behind them. Do you think that you could have written those songs even 10 years ago, maybe the first album, The Future's Not Ours, that you had with this lineup? Do you think you could have made these songs then or do you think it has been a learning curve to a degree? 

Absolutely. I couldn't have wrote those songs. I hadn't got the mental capacity to do them a couple of years ago. Yeah. It's definitely a developmental thing. And a confidence thing. I think there's some kind of humour, it's dark humour in this, but humour was something that I was never very good at. And maybe I have the confidence to try it a bit more now. So there's definitely a little bit of dark humour in this where I would never have tried that years ago. I would have had a feeling like I was falling flat on me face doing it. So definitely a developmental thing. 

A lot of the bands that I would talk to are new bands on their first album, maybe their second album, but there's not that many bands I've talked to who've been doing it for over 20 years. There is a thing to the longevity, isn't there? Just the relationships you build up, even you and Joe, let alone the others in the band. I guess that's where the confidence comes? You're calm and you know how each other works?

Yeah, we have a great respect for each other. He's an incredible talent and so is Julie and Anton. There's a trust with it. We know how each other works. But I think as well, we try different things every album, so it doesn't get stale. There's elements of the last record in this one, but I think it's a very, very different record. We're always like, 'Let's do something new' every time, so that keeps it fresh. But there's definitely a trust and I think that's an important thing - a musical trust between us, 

You did a voicenote for me for TPOE 300, talking about Lucia and Joe's work on that and his real development, I suppose, as a musician. Is that something that he's bringing to the table as well? he's not someone who wants to rest on what ALS have done in the past or anything? He wants to push things forward?

Joe Chester is his thing. That's his main thing. And he's incredibly talented. He's one of the most talented people I've ever met in me life. I think no matter what he turns his hand to, he can do it. He learned how to speak French a couple of years ago and he's speaking fluent French. Anything that he turns his mind to, he can do. So it's incredible to have that at your disposal. It's like that joke about your man out of Flaming Lips; What's Wayne Coyne's greatest asset? It's Steven Drozd. What's Brian Brannigan's greatest asset? It's Joe Chester. Gibby Haynes out of Butthole Surfers said that. I'm not a musician, but I have a lot of music in me and to be able to explain something to someone and then being able to transform that into a sound, it's an incredible thing to have. 

It's funny that you keep saying that you're not a musician when you're the frontman of the band. When did you decide that you're not a musician? For the first couple albums of ALS, are you thinking 'Oh I'm great, I'm a great musician'?

No, never. I'm anti-musician, I hate musicians! (laughs). I'm just not a musician. I'm someone that has words and melodies in them, but if you heard me playing these songs, they're awful.

7. Diver Walsh

Do you want to tell me about this song?

Not really, no. I didn't want to put this song on it. It's very hard to explain but there's that Japanese thing where they say, you show one face to the world, one face to your family, and then one face you never show to anybody. And I feel this is the face that I never showed to anybody in a song. If you could take a picture, a photograph of me soul, this would be it.

It makes me think it's the most personal song on the album so?

Probably ever. There's something about it that's very raw and very vulnerable. The band loved it when I played it to them. I didn't even like it as a song. I don't think people realise for a long time of listening to this record how incredible the music is on this. I think it's stunning. And I can say that because I'm not playing on it. So it's not me going, 'We're great!' They're great! It just sounds like a lost Smiths track maybe like 'Well I Wonder' or 'This Night has Opened my Eyes'. It's just the music was so incredible. When I heard it I was just like, 'Alright, this has to go on.' I think my voice is sunk down in it and I don't think it's something that people will get initially but I think with time people will realise how beautiful that music - not the song but how beautiful the music is in it. I was like, 'I can't not put this on.' 

We were talking about Morrissey and Liam Gallagher before we pressed record. If you're not a musician, do you enjoy being a frontman? 

No, not really. I love songwriting. I think the reason why I do it is I love to songwrite. My mind is a mess and songwriting is like a meditation for me. It focuses me mind, it focuses me thoughts; it stops my thoughts from running into dark places. When you're working on a song, I think if there's one thing in life that I say hand on my heart I love, is when I'm in the middle of a song and I know it's a good song. And it's the best feeling in the world. Nothing else matches that. I love doing that. Playing with the band, when we get into a room and we're playing and we're going to do a gig and certain times during gigs, there's an amazing feeling. That's an extraordinary privilege to be able to make noise and I love the whole thing of soundwaves and how it moves people. That is gorgeous and I love that. Frontmen, anything like that, image, I just have no interest in. It's stuff that you do because you have to do it. Bohemia Records is a small label putting out this record, Alan and Ian. They invest a lot of time and energy and money into what we do. So you have to do some stuff to get the record out there and make sure as many people hear it as possible, but it's not something that I relish.

8. Glass Swans

You're singing about the Grand Canal. You head along there, that's where you do some of your singing with the dogs?

I walk into work and I walk home as well… so yeah, I do a lot of writing down there, and it's amazing. I won't say too much about the song because I wanted some songs to be mysterious on the record where I didn't explain it and that's one of them. When I'm walking, especially in the winter, if you're walking down the big canal in the morning, about five o'clock, if you come across swans in the nighttime, when they're asleep, it's just the most awe-inspiring sight, especially if it's moonlit; just one of the most spiritual experiences, coming across an incredible animal. So that's all I want to say about that.

9. Factory Fada

‘Factory Fada’ is the penultimate song, and it's the longest song of the 10 as well, maybe the most epic, tragic, bloody minutes as well? Tell me about this one. There's a lot going on. 

Seven minutes! (laughs) It's a true story based on a primary school that I went to in Finglas. I had a much better experience in secondary school in the Christian Brothers ironically, it was the tail end of it. But my early experience in primary school when that violence was perpetuated against kids was still very prevalent. And it's a true story about two characters. There's a third character in it. It's really about a fella called Willy O'Leary. He was a bit of a head from Finglas, and he was in all my classes right up till I left school. I couldn't fit him in. So there was the two Francis's in the song, and I couldn't manage to wrangle him in but it's really his spirit - his spirit is in and his personality is in Francis Maguire.

Was ‘Factory Fada’ a hard one to finish? Was it a long gestation?

It was long, but again, because I knew the story - I mean, it's a true, mostly true, story. As I say, there's a third character that I got into the other characters, but everything that happened in that nearly is true and it's based on stuff that happened in their later lives where one of them got shot dead…

10. No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens

Only three lines in this song and that sample as well. It almost feels like an exhalation after what's gone before?

It's like the album's over. It's quite an emotional album with ups and downs. It's like a roller coaster of emotions. And that's like you're chilling out at the end.

Did you know that this was how the album was going to end or was this song once full of lyrics or anything like that? 

No. I thought it might start the record. And then Lee Scratch died 12 weeks after I got the sample, and it just seemed like a fitting place to put it, at the end with him saying, 'OK' at the end, and it's like him going into the ether.

Almost a tribute to him as well?

Absolutely yeah.

I asked you at the start are some of the songs linked or what's the common theme running through them. Do you see all of those characters that we've talked about over the past 45 minutes as linked in your head? Or do you see them all as separate songs, like they only exist in the songs, if you know what I mean?

I do think the characters are definitely linked - outsiders. All, or a lot, of my characters are outliers. I like the minutiae of telling little stories of ordinary people and just recording a little bit of social history that would disappear if you didn't put them into a song. 

How do you feel about the album as a whole? Are you excited about getting it out in the world? Are you proud of what you've put together as a band? 

Absolutely, yeah. I think what the band did on it is incredible. What they've done to the songs is brilliant. Yeah, very proud of it. I'm always very nervous when I'm putting something out; you're putting something out to be critiqued that you've worked on for a long time. I think that's quite unique in the world; if you're in a sport, you either win or you lose. Music or art is very subjective. And it's out there in the world for people to say what they want about it. And that can be a bit strange initially. Once it's out a couple of months, you don't care. So I'm always a little bit apprehensive, but I'm really, really excited about us having new material to play.