On October 13th – coincidentally, Friday the 13th, Andrew Hozier-Byrne performed at the Choctaw Grand Theatre. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the show as a gift for my 21st birthday. I’ve been a fan of Hozier for a long time, enough of one to have his entire discography on my phone, and told my partner (not a Hozier fan, just kind enough to come with me) that if I fainted when he took the stage, I was not to be judged for it.
OPener
The opener, Madison Cunningham, surprised me just a bit, as she seemed almost more suited to an Avett Brothers (another beloved band I’ve seen live) concert than a Hozier one. She performed five songs, one dedicated to her late grandmother, Rachel, and I could see Hozier’s influence in some of the lyrics and progressions in her work. But after a long, suspenseful hour, there he was. Live and in person, singing one of my favorite songs ever written, was Hozier.
It begins
He began with “De Selby (Part 1)”, from his third and latest album, Unreal Unearth (2023). It is the first time he’s sung in Gaelic, the native language of Ireland, and I continue to find it almost ethereal with its soft guitar and flowing, foreign lyrics. Easily segueing into “De Selby (Part 2)”, the concert then really kicked into gear, full of lights and sound with video displayed behind the performers.
I was in awe. Unfortunately, to my left was a pair of shrieking, drunk women, who kept loudly chattering and hip-checking my partner. He still swears he had a fun time, seeing me so happy and sharing in my quiet – sometimes unspoken – jokes about us and the music (lyrics like “‘Cause, God, I’ve never felt young” were paired with a rueful smile and a jostle of his shoulder that had him grinning), but I could’ve yelled at those women for bothering the two of us so much.
After the joined De Selby performance, Hozier greeted the crowd to predictably raucous applause. In all my time of reading hilarious tweets and listening to his music, he’s always come across as a laid-back, soft-spoken man, and that definitely continued in every gentle, heartfelt speech to the audience. Following that, another of my personal favorites, was “From Eden”. This song is from his first album, Hozier (2014). It narrates from the perspective of the serpent who corrupted Adam and Eve, portraying the singer as a wretched, tainted thing desperately seeking – and yet hiding from – the tragic, precious subject of the song. It’s such a melancholy, longing piece of music, and yet its sound is so sweet and hopeful. I adore it.
The bulk
Another little speech – this one explaining the impetus behind his next piece – preceded “Francesca”, inspired by Dante’s Inferno, sung from one lover to another about their devotion, even in death. This is a fan favorite from his third album, though it never particularly caught my attention when songs like “De Selby (Part 1)”, “Unknown/Nth”, and “I, Carrion (Icarian)” were all available beside it. What had drawn me to Hozier was his softness; the beseeching, aching thing that I had always felt with love; a clawing, ferocious thing that wanted to keep those I cared for safe and happy by my hand. Hozier, and especially songs like “From Eden”, “Like Real People Do”, and “It Will Come Back”, all spoke to that part of me, that bruised and yearning thing. “Francesca”, to me, did not represent that.
What truly delighted me about the whole concert was how everyone was singing along. We all adored this music, this artist, and we showed that. Wholly, simply, we enjoyed it in the way we had enjoyed his music for years. We stood, and we sang, and it was incredible. For a couple songs, he invited us to sing, and the first one of these was “Cherry Wine”. He said it was one of the first songs he ever recorded, and the version available on Apple Music is a live one, with audible birdsong for those who listen closely. Its music video on YouTube makes it even more clear that it is about domestic violence, and yet it is almost hauntingly beautiful. This is one of the most mesmerizing abilities Hozier has, to take something grotesque and make it lovely. “I, Carrion (Icarian)” is another example of this, as is “In A Week and Wasteland, Baby!”, all songs featuring horrifying subject material (carrion, rot and decomposition, the apocalypse), with loving, caring, gentle sounds to them. This, of course, is only possible because of the man who wrote and sang them all.
Hozier followed “Cherry Wine” with a heartfelt thank-you to the Choctaw people for donating to Ireland during the famine, a mere ten years after the Trail of Tears. He spoke of the erasure of Irish culture and language by English rule, and how the Irish have always related to Native Americans because of it. I had already guessed where this was going, and quietly enjoyed “Butchered Tongue”, a piece of grief for that lost culture and hope for “what can still be known.” As a card-carrying member of the Choctaw tribe myself, that song had always meant a lot to me. An ashamed part of me rears up every year when I receive a birthday card from the tribe, reading words in a language I do not know, regretting that I never delved more into my grandfather’s heritage. We have not been to a powwow since I was much younger, and I have neglected to vote in their elections. Judging by the fact his newest album features both “De Selby (Part 1)” and” Butchered Tongue”, it seems like Hozier has recently leaned into his Irish heritage, in a way I wish I had with Choctaw.
A few more classics followed. “Like Real People Do”, a personal favorite from his first album, is one of the ones that helped earn him a “bog witch man” meme on Twitter. It is a cautious love song, with lyrics like “I will not ask, and neither should you,” and almost leans to the idea that the two subjects are, in some way, monstrous. It speaks of love like they are not human, that they “should just kiss like real people do,” and along with “In A Week”, this has somewhat gained him a running joke of being fae and poorly masquerading as human. Before the other classic from his second album, “Almost (Sweet Music)”, he sang “Damage Gets Done”, the collaboration I never knew I needed. Die-hard fans of my writing (Kidding!) might know that my article Seeking the Spotlight featured an artist by the name of Brandi Carlile. I grew up on her music, and saw her live in Dallas in the Summer of 2022. Shockingly, “Damage Gets Done” is by both Hozier and Brandi Carlile, which I never saw coming! He called her a good friend of his, which was absolutely delightful to me, a massive fan of both!
Wrapping up
Of course, after “Almost (Sweet Music)”, from Wasteland, Baby! (2019), came the most classic of them all: “Take Me To Church”. This is his radio hit from 2014, and the first song of his first album. The whole auditorium may have been singing along for the whole concert, but now they were yelling along. Shockingly, I’ve sort of lost interest in “Take Me To Church” over the years. This is a phenomenon my mother and I have discussed before, in fact: the shift from your initial favorites to the ones that become your favorites. We’ve discussed this in depth over our mutual favorite albums, and while “Take Me To Church” was initially a favorite, it is now overshadowed. Ignoring the other two albums to even the playing field, my old favorites from Hozier were “Take Me To Church”, “Cherry Wine”, and “Someone New”. Now, my favorites are “From Eden”, “Like Real People Do”, and “It Will Come Back”. I now realize, as well, that I used these exact three in this exact order earlier in this article, which hopefully shows just how much they mean to me!
“Nina Cried Power” is another good example of this. When I first discovered Wasteland, Baby!, this was my favorite song. It is a reference to another (beloved) artist, Nina Simone, who you might recognize for “I Put A Spell on You”. This is, in particular, a reference to Sinnerman, in which the chorus proclaims: “I cried, power, power!” Hozier featured the wonderful Mavis Staples – whose family, the Staples Singers, famously sung for the Civil Rights Movement – in this tribute to Nina Simone. “That Civil Rights Movement directly inspired- not indirectly inspired, but directly inspired a Civil Rights Movement [in Ireland],” he said. He expressed great respect and admiration for not only Mavis, but her entire family, for being the artistic expression of that movement and inspiring not just him, but the whole of Ireland.
The unfortunate thing about this is that he followed that song with “Unknown/Nth”. This was not a bad thing, technically, and he absolutely had the right to do this. The bad part of this is that this song is one of my favorites he has ever written, possibly one of my favorite songs, total. And this seems great! My favorite, live, in person, with my partner of three years sitting right next to me! No, you’re right, it was wonderful. Except, mortifyingly, I began to cry. I stood, and I could not sing through the crying, so I mouthed along to the lyrics, for I knew every one, and held my partner’s hand as I wept. It was beautiful, so beautifully sung, and it meant so much to me, and now I might just bawl every time I listen to it.
And, for the most of it, that was the concert! Aside from, of course, the encore, which was “Work Song”, from his first album. My partner later shared that he recognized it, and was unaware it was sung by the same man as “Take Me To Church”. “I need to listen to more of his stuff,” said my metalhead partner, who listens to music about Vikings and wars, and somehow ended up dating a soft, flower-loving girl. “I really liked a lot of it.” In all honesty, I found “Work Song” an interesting choice. I had almost expected “Take Me To Church” to be his go-to encore; barring that, I expected “Wasteland, Baby!”, perhaps “No Plan”, maybe even “It Will Come Back” for a more peppy, edgy end to a generally sweet lineup. “Work Song” – which, admittedly, is one of the fan favorites of his first album – seemed almost too normal to be an encore. Although…when I saw The Decemberists live (my very first concert), they chose their seven-minute-long sea shanty for their encore, so maybe that skewed my experimental results.
thoughts?
All told, I think I could happily see Hozier live year after year and never tire of it. I’ve seen The Avett Brothers live twice, Brandi Carlile once, The Decemberists once, and now Hozier is on the list – maybe I can rotate between them all, though I have promised my partner a Sabaton concert at some point. I could barely hear for a few minutes after, but that’s par for the course, and I was nearly giddy from the music. My phone is now full of videos, my head is full of happy memories, and my partner is most likely full of fond exasperation for how I kept shaking him when my favorites came on. Five stars, ten out of ten; if you enjoy concerts and don’t talk during them (yes, I am still a little annoyed at those drunk women), I highly recommend seeing Hozier!