Hozier is incredibly unprolific. It is remarkable how rare his releases are. His debut album (remember “Take Me to Church”?) is nine years old now, and Unreal Unearth is only his third full-length release. And yet, he’s incredibly popular, with nearly 27 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
For the uninitiated, Andrew John Hozier-Byrne, known mononymously as Hozier,1 is an Irish musician who blends Blues, Soul, Rock, Folk, R&B, and Catholic Trauma to generate an incredibly catchy, groovy, sexy sound that feels very unique to him, despite the many influences. And he’s an incredible poet, so his music also has lyrical depth that few artists can match.
And I feel I should take a moment here to underscore just how unimpressed I was by his 2019 album, Wasteland, Baby! It wasn’t bad (I think I scored it Yellow). But it also just wasn’t up to par, especially after the incredible debut effort in Hozier and then the five-year wait following it. As a result of that disappointment, I was only cautiously hopeful as Unreal Unearth’s release date approached, despite the viral success of “Eat Your Young” earlier this year.
And, let me be clear: I hadn’t yet heard the full length of “Eat Your Young” until this week. Familiarity with singles can sway my opinion on albums, so I don’t seek them out. Nor do I go listening to EPs, as those tracks are often recycled for LPs.2 So the only bit of this album I’m familiar with thus far is the fifteen seconds I’ve heard of “Eat Your Young” on TikTok so often over the past four months or so.
Now that we’ve covered that…
Unreal Unearth is absolutely everything that we needed from a new Hozier album. This thing fires on ALL cylinders and, quite frankly, is his best release to date. And it’s very dark, with the subject matter making you wonder a bit what the source of the emotional depth on the album is. As my sister put it: “WHO HURT MY FAIRY MAN”3
Let me start by discussing the tracks. I may or may not keep this short.
The album starts with a suite named “De Selby”. The track’s title comes from a character in an Irish absurdist novel, Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, as Hozier explains in a “Behind the Song” video on Youtube. Halfway through, the lyrics switch to Irish, and Hozier says, of this switch, that it’s an extension of the ideas the song is already discussing, and translates:
“‘Although you’re bright and light, you arrive to me like nightfall, you come like nightfall. You and I sort of mixed up together, you and I metamorphosized.’ So that same idea of, you can’t see where one begins and where one ends, that is an actual metamorphosis of some kind.”
At the end of the song, the instrumentation depresses (honestly, that’s really the best verb for what happens here; it’s such a neat effect with a lot of tension) and leaves a moment of just metallic percussion (and I’m not quite sure what percussion element it is, but it’s not your standard drums) where it transitions to “De Selby (Part 2)”. Hozier’s voice kicks the track off, and then the strings come in with some serious funk.
And now, with this idea in place that this relationship thrives in darkness or, in some sense, is the darkness, we get the chorus:
I wanna run against the world that's turnin' I'd movе so fast that I'd outpace the dawn I wanna be gonе I wanna run so far, I'd beat the mornin' Before the dawn has come, I'd block the sun If you want it done
Yes. This is important and there will be a quiz.
This bright desperation is overshadowed by the end of track 3, “First Time”, however, as there’s a turn in the last few lines, not unlike the final couplet of an English Sonnet. “Francesca” is a lamenting rock ballad which is, basically, “I still love you, and I’d do it all over again”.
In all of this, thus far (minus Part 1 of “De Selby”), the instrumentation is rich, deep, and fairly complex at points. “I, Carrion (Icarian)”, which paints the lovelorn speaker as Icarus, is the first track to opt for simpler instrumentation, but we don’t get to hear Hozier’s more minimalistic side until the 11th track, “To Someone From a Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe)”.
“Eat Your Young” is an incredible track, though it doesn’t fully mesh with the album’s theme and story. It’s just kinda sitting there. Brandi Carlile joins Hozier for a very solid duet in “Damage Gets Done”, and then the first half of the album ends on a philosophical note with “Who We Are”.
The second half kicks off with in instrumental track called “Son of Nyx”. “All Things End” is a very early-90s R&B track, then it pulls in a Gospel choir for the finish. “Abstract (Psychopomp)” is a hauntingly beautiful track which finds a balance between light and dark while describing an event which is terrifying and traumatizing, but also steeped in deep love and admiration. And it’s done with these short, abbreviated, but highly descriptive lines through the verses; it’s a four-minute marvel.
Finally, the album ends on “First Light”, which is marked by tense instrumentation through the verses and, of course, the arrival of dawn. It’s a powerful and fitting closing track.
I do want to briefly touch on two other tracks which feel like they “broke character” here: tracks 12 & 13: “Butchered Tongue” is about America, and very keenly notes Native American place names still in use, and how strangely familiar-yet-foreign they sound to Hozier’s Irish ear; “Anything But” is an entropic song, if that makes sense (or maybe “brightly nihilistic”?), in which the speaker wishes for non-existence in the most cheerful ways imaginable to a tune that is over-the-top happy. The latter is possibly still in character, but I feel it’s somewhat debatable (the former isn’t, IMO). Both of tracks are still very good.
There’s not a single even mildly lackluster song on the album. Each track has its own personality and, despite their shared darkness, the album, as a whole, is gorgeous. It reeks of despair, emotional desperation, and pending catharsis. Yet, it isn’t a depressing album despite all of the evident pain and longing and loss.
Despite the momentary asides that “Eat Your Young” and “Butchered Tongue” definitely are, the album feels very cohesive. I’m absolutely thrilled with this release.4
Rating: Purple5
No, Hozier isn’t a band. Some people still think this.
Two of the three tracks on the Eat Your Young EP made it onto Unreal Unearth. There is also another discussion I want to have on this topic at some point with emphasis on what Within Temptation is doing recently.
The title of track 4 suggests it was somebody named Francesca.
If anybody has wondered about my occasional shots at Pitchfork, allow their review of this album to illustrate why.
Only the second Purple of 2023 so far.
Love it. ♡