A Lazarus Soul in The Grand Social on April 10th 2015

The success of last year’s ‘The Last of the Analogue Age’ looks to be a factor in tonight’s performance. A Lazarus Soul, welcoming the launch of their new EP ‘Mercury Hit a High’, knock out a set that’s both diverse in sound and comfortably celebratory.

The crowd is small but enthusiastic, with friends and family seeming to make up the lion’s share of attendees, making the night seem that little bit more intimate in the close surroundings of The Grand Social.

Guitarist Joe Chester joins Brian Brannigan on the stage for the first song of the night, Last Seen. It sets a tone of austerity and intensity with Brannigan staring into the crowd, who hold their breath with a pious fervour, making this ballad of lost youth all the more profound.

Afterwards Julie Bienvenu and Tony Hegarty join the rest of the band for On The Late Shift With The Skeleton Crew, putting paid to any suggestions of a stripped back set.

The mood lifts within the first few bars of the song, a whole load of energy replaces the sombre tone that went before with Joe Chester giving it loads on guitar and going close to bursting an eardrum or two.

What follows is a carefully hewn set that rises and falls, pitching more than a few ballads into the mix, though that does nothing to quell the dancing spirit around the room. Mark’ll Sink Us, one of the tracks on the new EP, is such a believable version of The Fall’s original version that the band’s identity almost falls away.

For the most part though the set is confined to numbers that can’t help but emote a certain feeling, songs that are full of life and experience like The Future’s Not Ours or The Day I Disappeared, which rounds off the night in appropriately bouncy fashion as the crowd get a sing-song going.

A Lazarus Soul are a band steeped in a Dublin state of mind. Brannigan talks about friends in Perth as well as other Irish gigs in the capital on the night. Multiply this with the critical but humanistic perception they give of Ireland and you get something very rare these days.

It’s hard to know what’s next for A Lazarus Soul. ‘Mercury Hit A High’ is not an EP that will catapult them into the stratosphere, it’s more of an epilogue to a very successful 2014.

With the band still channeling the enthusiastic focus that went into ‘The Last of the Analogue Age’ and playing a hugely diverse set that took in only three songs from their earlier output, you can see them taking off in the near future, if the world stops listening to Electro-Pop for long enough to hear the band’s baritone Irish tales.