Fans on the internet speculate that he’s actually an immortal tree god incarnated in the flesh of a lanky, lusciously-haired Irish man; some think he communicates spiritually with Persephone and communes with the ghost of Oscar Wilde; he once tweeted that he hungered for Silica gel. Outside of the mysticism and lore that surrounds his persona, Hozier (stage name coming from full name Andrew John Hozier-Byrne) is known mainly for his wildly successful 2013 protest single “Take Me To Church.” But the rest of his discography–– a debut self-titled album and his latest sophomore release Wasteland, Baby!–– deserves as much recognition for its lyrical intellect, thematic complexity, and downright musical artistry.
Incorporating jazz, blues, and gospel influences into songs that topically range from the Catholic Church, bog bodies, American politics, and small carnivorous birds that impale their prey on tree thorns (more on that later,) Hozier’s music also touches on the strange beauty of decay, endings, and the Earth’s cyclic patterns: the perfect theme for fall and the gradual slope into winter. While any Hozier song is valuable, what follows are my personal favorite picks from his albums, the perfect songs to listen to during a stroll down leaf-strewn sidewalks in the brisk chill of the year’s ending months.
The namesake of his second album: “Wasteland, Baby!” is an apocalyptic lullaby, complete with metallic guitar plucking and frenetic, watery, ethereal xylophone synths. Its gorgeous instrumentals coupled with Andrew’s deep vibrato are haunting, although catching–– the music itself sounds like sun on water: bright, translucent, liquid, undulating. It’s as though the listener is hearing his voice through the edge of the surface, just slightly distorted through the denseness.
Some interpret this song as likening the event of falling in love to the end of the world, both of them being catastrophic and inevitable, yet spectacular. It could also be heard as a testament to love’s enduring nature: as the world falls away in flames, Andrew and his lover can revel in the act of love, untouched by fear because they have each other. Even in the midst of surrounding rubble, Andrew can salvage something unbroken; his ability to love someone else.
It’s sleepy, it’s warm, it’s dark, it’s just a little bit feral. One of Hozier’s older songs, “Like Real People Do” concerns two bog bodies (bodies that have been naturally mummified in the Earth’s sedimentary layers for up to thousands of years) that learn to love again. Take the lyrics: “I will not ask you where you came from / I will not ask and neither should you / Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips / We should just kiss like real people do.” The bodies set their pasts aside, not bothering to speak about them simply because they want to hurry up and get to the act of loving each other.
The production is stripped, mostly comprised of Andrew’s beloved acoustic guitar, along with gut-kick percussion at the end of the chorus, grave, striking piano chords and layered, whispery, hummed harmonies. I picture low, drifting mists over moonlit swamps at dusk, filled with the deep croaking of frogs, mud-browns and dark red shadows, sort of Baroque scenery. (Also, if we need any further proof that this man is in fact immortal, here we are. I mean, come on.)
“Be” is a celebration of love in all its forms, especially a celebration of love as a salvageable emblem of good in a world plagued with hardship, controversy, and loss. It’s punchy, upbeat, gospel-influenced, has a stomp-clap intro, shimmers with tambourine and rolls with bodied electric guitar.
Lyrically, “Be” is both political and religious. Andrew offers images of devastation: floods, famines, being exiled from Eden, then pleads with love to continue being as it has always been. There are critical jabs at Trump’s politics, speculations about atheism and Christianity, and in the first verse, a reference to Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” which complements Wasteland, Baby!’s apocalyptic motif nicely. Love is revolutionized in this song, made a tool to dismantle oppressive apparatuses. Andrew could be arguing that love is what will save us, that when seemingly all is lost, love is what will still remain.
“Foreigner’s God” is a comment on the dissonance Andrew feels when loving a woman who steps beyond society’s convention and the distance it places between himself and his culture. It seems that the song centers on Andrew’s interest in a woman who openly expresses her sensual and sexual natures, causing him to question the beliefs about his societal expectations of women: “All that I’ve been taught / And every word I got / Is foreign to me.”
This song also touches on the cultural limitations of one’s religion, sung in the lines “But still my heart is heavy / With the hate of some other man’s beliefs.” One Genius annotator interprets potential references to Paganism in the lyrics “Since some liar brought the thunder / When the land was godless and free.” A reference to Ireland’s early Pagan roots and the worship of multiple goddesses in its early years, Andrew could be using this as a metaphor for appreciating or venerating women. The production is moody, cloudy, neither slow nor quick. The opening low piano progression feels charged and oppressive, nicely mirroring the lyrical subject.
One of the sadder and musically powerful singles on Wasteland, Baby!, “Shrike” seems to compare a failed relationship to the namesake of the song; a Shrike, a small bird that kills its prey by impaling it onto any sharp protrusion. During one of Andrew’s romances, he couldn’t adequately communicate his appreciation to his lover, thus causing a strain between the two. In this instance, Andrew is the entity that caused the love to fail, unintentionally murdering it. He sings: “Dragging along, follow in your form, / Hung like the pelt of some prey you had worn / Remember me love, when I’m reborn, / As the shrike to your sharp glorious thorn.”
It opens with Celtic guitar, muted, knocking percussion, followed by sinking piano and trembling strings. For such a magical sound, its content is rather somber and powerful.
While I don’t have enough time to write about every one of my favorite Hozier songs, here is a list of the rest of them:
- “Nobody”
- “Angel of Small Death”
- “Someone New”
- “Cherry Wine”
- “Would That I”
- “No Plan”
- “To Noise Making (Sing)”
- “From Eden”
- “Work Song”
- Literally his discography. Just go on that.