EVA LAZARUS: Beyond The Sound System

W: Sibyl Cooper. I: Olly Bromidge

Birmingham born, Midlands raised, Bristol made, Eva Lazarus is a staple to the Bristol live music scene, taking stages across the country by storm.

As her namesake suggests, Lazarus plugs life and soul directly into the sound system. With a loaded discography of reggae, dub and garage bangers fit for festival headline stages, and three studio albums packed with soul, r&b and funk fusion, to call her a versatile artist is an understatement of the decade.

ASBO is blessed as she sat down with us to talk music, writing, collaboration and family.

Eva started her career on the streets of Bristol, busking with a guitar, mic, and a selection of backing tracks. Singing, grafting, she immersed herself in the city’s music scene and built up a resilience and confidence that radiates from her today. Having not yet translated her instinctive ability to blend genre to a live audience, she frequented and performed at smaller venues across the city like Mr Wolf’s:

“I was in the closet rapping and just singing. I was way too scared to be like, ‘I'm a girl doing a thing’. There was maybe one girl rapping and she was so good that it made me want to. Her name was Poison. They didn't pay you at Mr Wolf’s, they fed you noodles.”

At the start of her career in the mid 2010s, there was more pressure and restrictions for female artists who wanted to go mainstream: the girl raps, or, the girl sings. This mold stifled the creative expression of female artists, and would take the courage of someone like Ms Dynamite to break out of the industry’s expectations.

Ms Dynamite greatly inspires Eva, with echoes of her sound and bad gyal energy in her tracks like ‘Babylon Raid’ (2019) and ‘Warrior’s Code’ (2019). At Boomtown 2025, years after her ‘noodles for bars’ days at Mr Wolf’s had passed, Eva met Ms Dynamite:

“I asked her for a picture because why wouldn't you? I was like, I'll post the rest of my Boomtown experience later. But this is the post. The comments section was crazy. Katie B atted me and was like, ‘you guys need to collab!’

Collaboration has seen Eva’s career sky rocket after her album More Fyah dropped in 2019 with instrumentals and production by Mungo’s Hi Fi. On this fiery sound system record, her vocals float in a gentle smoke over tracks like ‘Light as a Feather’, but also aren’t afraid to burrow deeper into the mix on tracks like ‘We Weren’t Made For This’ and ‘More Fyah’, complementing the dub beats and reggae brass instrumentals.

On ‘Amsterdam’ (2019), Eva gives a dynamic performance showing us the range of her vocals as she reflects on her experience in the city. She paints a portrait of Amsterdam and I see her musing by the canal side under the sun, watching troubles at home fade away. This was the first track she wrote with Mungo’s Hi Fi:

“Amsterdam is a true story. I did go through a breakup. I did fly to Amsterdam on my own. I came home and I was reflecting at my kitchen table when I started writing. I had the chorus and the first verse, then I wrote verse two and three and completed the song with Mungo’s.”

Tom Tattersall of Mungo’s Hi Fi reached out to Eva after seeing footage of her spitting bars over an instrumental of theirs at a gig in Bristol. Eva’s versatility as a singer, rapper, and guitarist spurred him to invite her to record at his Glasgow studio. The album’s success cemented her in sound system cannon, alluding to future releases as a sound system or dub vocalist.

But to assume Eva is a sound system and reggae dub artist only would be a mistake.

With the release of Brandy Kisses in 2022, Eva takes a new direction, incorporating elements of soul, gospel, kickback, and R&B with call backs to sound system culture. The opening tracks ‘Define Me By My Love’ and ‘Empty Pockets’ are down tempo and lyric focused. With vocal production by Dirty Dike, her voice has matured like a wine, wrapping the instrumentals in blue velvet sheets. There is a greater sense of consolidation, the story telling is emotive, and we peer through a looking glass into Eva’s vulnerable side:

“All of it [Brandy Kisses] is relationship based. The loves, the losses, and the psychology behind who it is. Who have you shifted into over the last few years? Where did you start and where did you finish? It's like the evolution of becoming a woman. You find relationships that aren't for you. You find relationships that are very much for you, and the discomfort of what it feels like to be vulnerable.”

Something has changed for Eva between More Fyah and Brandy Kisses. Her bars are tighter, her vocal harmonies are more expansive and complex. This change is greater than the experiences that shaped her on tour, or due to writing the album in the COVID-19 pandemic, as during this period she became a mother:

“I have to be really on top of my time now. I never realised before having kids how much time I had. I love being a mum. I'm obsessed with my children. But carving out time to do both things is tough. I have to lean on all of my people all of the time. But its effect on my creativity. I would have said I felt a stronger, more drastic effect.”

This transition into motherhood is best exemplified on track six, ‘I Prayed For You’ (2022). This interlude contains Eva’s vocals atop the cooing and breathing of her first born child. She recorded the track with her baby in her arms, and it serves as a rest point from the album’s drama. It is a reflective lullaby that she sang to her child every night as a baby. It is a moment of intimacy which is tectonic in its subtlety, a moment of bonding between mother and child sealed in a time capsule.

As Brandy Kisses is Eva’s first full length solo studio venture, she feels like she’s in a candy store, experimenting with genre blending and creating an expansive tracklist which could make up a tour set on its own.

Her 2025 album Make Your Own Sunshine stands at a contrast to this with a shorter track list, showing her further artistic growth, and her ability to consolidate her best lyrical and rhythmic ideas into seven tracks. The production by Zed Bias, Shamis, and Rebiere creates a vintage texture, like holding a roll of camera film up to the sun; the glare shining through the acetate:

“I wanted to make statements with the songs rather than, ‘This is a concept record.’ I wanted everything to be medicinal. These are songs that you can feed yourself a little potion from the cabinet to just top yourself up with when you're not feeling so there.”

The instrumental tone feels darker, combining elements of soul with orchestral instrumentation, lofi, R&B, jazz and reggae with a splash of synth-wave - despite the lyrics offering optimism and empowering sentiments.

I imagine myself walking alongside the River Avon under a deep orange late summer sun, and picking up the potion, ‘Be Here’ (2025). The synths brew a breeze in my stomach, guiding me to my destination, and whipping away anxieties and insecurities as if they were fallen leaves.

This darker tone in the instrumentals feels like Eva is processing a greater scale of emotions, like she is stitching back together a chest wound, healing herself, and falling back in love with joy:

“I think songs should cost you something. I don't really love the feeling of being that vulnerable. But if I can push through that discomfort in the studio, usually I end up with some that I like. I'm like, God, that's how I felt.”

Eva’s bars have again evolved, carrying a wiseness not captured on Brandy Kisses or More Fyah. They are best exhibited on ‘Raised Around Queens’ where Eva gives us glimpses into her family life and culture, discussing her aunties and uncles from her Caribbean heritage, adorned with gold teeth and traditional dress.

Conserving energy, finding community, and preserving your peace are themes central to the album, and are fully fleshed out in the title track. Eva raps and sings over a delicate, sepia toned jazz and R&B instrumental. She is staying inside, taking care of her mental and not passing out pieces of her energy at the gig, the park, or the rave. The sound system baddie from More Fyah is still inside of Eva, as is the Brandy Kissed songstress, but she takes a mindful approach to her time now, and this informs the track list being cut in half.

Many talented lyricists and songwriters are protective over their work and only write for themselves. Eva is not this way:

“I love writing for myself but I like to try on other scenarios, other situations. If I was writing to somebody else, I would love for them to just have a nice conversation or a deep conversation or sad conversation and let me know what's going on in your world and then I can pull from.”

Collaborating with artists has allowed Eva’s career to reach new heights, and it seems the future holds songwriting projects as she continues to release her work through her own label Konichi-Wah-Gwarn Records. She has a bucket list of artists she would like to write for, including Ariana Grande (during her R&B era specifically) Rihanna, Nia Archives, and new artists such as Kaya Fire.

But what advice does Eva have for up-and-coming independent artists?:

“Ask for help. You need it. If you are a super independent person, that might be a muscle that you need to build, but you need to ask for as much help and advice as humanly possible. There are no stupid questions. And if there is a creative community that you can build around yourself, do that.”

Eva has built a career on defying limits, refusing to be boxed in by genre or expectation. From her early graft on Bristol’s streets to headline stages, she has proven to be one of the UK’s most versatile and uncompromising artists, and a hidden gem to international audiences.

With her own label and a growing reputation as a songwriter, Eva isn’t just part of the scene, she’s shaping its future.

Whatever comes next, it’s clear she’ll continue to do it on her own terms.

The ASBO team eagerly awaits more from The Queen Lazarus.