Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, Dante’s Inferno, the Roman poet Ovid, Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf: these aren’t random works culled from Jedward’s book collection but, rather, some of the inspirations for Andrew Hozier-Byrne’s third album. Unreal Unearth may continue to highlight Hozier’s somewhat more academic interests, but the songs here are as rooted by earthly concerns – physical presence is as “natural as another leg around you in the bed frame”, he sings in To Someone from a Warm Climate – as they are by scholarly matters – “And though I burn, how could I fall when I am lifted by every word you say to me? If anything should fall at all, it’s the world that falls away from me,” he sighs in I, Carrion/Icarian.
There are some firsts here. Hozier sings in Irish on the songs De Selby (Part 1) and To Someone from a Warm Climate that is subtitled Uisce Fhuaraithe, which translates as “chilled water” but which he elegantly recasts as “the feeling of coolness only water brings”.
Another first is certain to have a bearing on the commercial remit of Unreal Unearth: this is the first of Hozier’s albums to feature co-writers. The differences are subtle but robust: the songs are incontestably Hozier, but the input of his co-producer Daniel Tannenbaum and an array of co-songwriters can’t be ignored.
The most well-developed examples are to be heard on the likes of Francesca, a mountain of a song, written with Jennifer Decilveo, with doom chords that Black Sabbath would sell their souls for, I, Carrion/Icarian – another co-write with Decilveo, this one swapping volume for the decorum of Simon and Garfunkel – and Damage Gets Done, a commercial radio banger with seven writing credits that features vocals by Brandi Carlile.
Sometimes less is more, however, particularly on an album highlight, Unknown/Nth, one of Hozier’s own songs, which reconfigures Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac blues into a grief-stricken ballad that beseeches the return of a departed lover.
It is a powerful song on an album full of them, pretty much, and therein lies the real pleasure of Unreal Unearth: its 16 tracks ebb and flow in ways that enrich the listener as they highlight an artist who continues to feed his intellect while maintaining a healthy, sensual human touch.
Unreal Unearth: Track by track
DE SELBY (PART 1)
A serene start to Unreal Unearth, with Hozier singing, in high-register vocals, about the “blackness of air” and a “darkness so deep” over acoustic guitar. The final section is a lament in Irish that closes with a foreboding choral chant and a sonic descent that ...
DE SELBY (PART 2)
... segues into the second part, which is more upbeat and typically Hozier-like. The first track on the album that features a multiple co-writing credit for six people. It also contains a mini orchestra of rock and classical musicians to get its point across. Too many cooks?
FIRST TIME
It isn’t every day that a songwriter references Lethe, one of the five rivers, from Greek mythology, of the underworld of Hades, but Hozier’s depiction of the loss of love here is so deep that his declaration of drinking that river dry – and, according to myth, losing all memory of past experience – is as potent as the smooth soul that surrounds it.
FRANCESCA
One of the album’s most forceful highlights, this quiet-loud-quiet-loud song, with rock-solid riffs, will surely spark ructions at live shows. And are those doom chords and chants we hear towards the end? Is the world on its heels? Francesca says yes.
I, CARRION/ICARIAN
The calm after Francesca’s thunder, I, Carrion/Icarian is one of those Hozier songs that are as light and soft as a Mediterranean summer breeze. The Greek mythological figure of Icarus is referenced but only (apparently) with regards to love’s sometimes unattainable ambitions.
EAT YOUR YOUNG
You know this one, as it was the teaser for Unreal Unearth, released on St Patrick’s Day this year – Hozier’s 33rd birthday. Its lyrics are, perhaps, about typical concerns – climate change, the economics of war, corporate greed; the soul vibe swings with style.
DAMAGE GETS DONE (featuring Brandi Carlile)
A pop song! Unreal Unearth hits commercial-radio pay dirt with Damage Gets Done. It may be a seven-person co-write, but it sounds like one of those effortless tunes that take less than 10 minutes to come up with. Brandi Carlile’s vocals dovetail perfectly with Hozier’s.
WHO WE ARE
A slow build introduces a well-paced song that features one of the best vocal performances on the album. As across Unreal Unearth, the narrative theme is of surrender and departure, loss and regret, but here it’s heightened by muscular musical dynamics.
SON OF NYX
There are vocals but no discernible words, so this is mostly a sweeping instrumental, powered by Budapest Festival Orchestra, with a tonality that makes it sound like the end of the world is nigh. In Greek myth, the primordial Nyx was the goddess of night and the daughter of Chaos, regarded by Greek cosmologists as the hollow, inexplicable space at the beginning of time. But you knew that, right?
ALL THINGS END
Time to get slinky, to slip into something more comfortable, to get it on and get it off? Yes, but there’s a sad ending. To the sounds of handclaps and a sassy soul/gospel choir, Hozier sings, “The last time I felt your weight on my chest you said, we didn’t get it right but, love, we did our best ...”
TO SOMEONE FROM A WARM CLIMATE (UISCE FHUARAITHE)
Ah, now, just how gorgeous can a slow song get? Hozier and the producer Jeff Gitelman have written a humdinger of a ballad. The Irish subtitle is astutely defined “The feel of coolness only water brings – there are some things that no one teaches you”, the singing is exceptional and the intensity of feeling in the lyrics is acutely romantic – “I wish I could say that the river of my arms has found the ocean…”.
BUTCHERED TONGUE
The first song on the album written solely by Hozier, this is fuelled partly by reminiscences of a childhood spent in rural Ireland and partly by the delight of a well-travelled man at hearing echoes of his country – “So far from home to have a stranger call you darling ...”.
ANYTHING BUT
Thoughts of home again feature here – “I’d settle for a shopping trolley in the Liffey” – but tender acoustic waves are replaced by handclapping worldbeat music that blends Zydeco and African street rhythms. It pales in comparison to most of the album’s other tracks.
ABSTRACT (PSYCHOPOMP)
At last, the smartphone-torch song! Cynics be gone: we know all too well that when Hozier sings the chorus of this properly anthemic track – “See how it shines ...” followed by perfectly pitched “ooh-oohs” – at his 3 Arena shows in Dublin in December, the venue will light up like a cluster of constellations.
UNKNOWN/NTH
The second song on Unreal Unearth written solely by Hozier is downright beautiful. As he opens with “You know the distance never made a difference to me ... I’d have walked across the floor of any sea, ignored the vastness between all that can be seen and all that we believe,” the song unfurls like a perfect, poignant take on Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac blues: desperately sad, wonderfully executed.
FIRST LIGHT
Another convincing rock song that, despite having everything but the kitchen sink thrown at it, emerges with the kind of dynamics you’d hear on an album-track epic by Muse.
