10 years ago today: Hozier released his self-titled debut album

Originally published in Hot Press in 2014:

Given the runaway success of radio and YouTube smash ‘Take Me To Church’, there’s a heaven of a lot of expectation on the shoulders of young Andrew Hozier-Byrne. Fortunately, the 24-year-old Wicklow native doesn’t disappoint with this superb self-titled debut album.

Hozier was produced by Rob Kirwan, who’s previously worked with PJ Harvey and Delorentos, and largely recorded over the last two years in the artist’s home studio in a Wicklow attic. Both musically and lyrically, steeped in classically influenced but contemporary sounding blues, rock and folk, this collection couldn’t be more confident or well-crafted.

With debut albums, as with baptisms, weddings and funerals, it’s always good to get the mass out of the way early. Sensibly enough, proceedings open with ‘Take Me To Church’. While the album doesn’t feature another song as immediately striking amongst its 12 other tracks, Hozier’s brilliant blend of folk, blues, gospel and rock slow burns beautifully. A goodly number of listens in, it’s still surprising me.

That Hozier is no one hit wonder is immediately obvious from the intriguingly-titled second track, ‘Angel Of Small Death And The Codeine Scene’. It’s a bluesy rocker that builds in intensity until hitting an urgent chorus: “With her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean/ She’s the Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene/ With her straw blonde hair and, her arms hard and lean/ She’s the Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene.” I can already hear this as a live anthem.

The pace is maintained with the R&B-influenced ‘Jackie And Wilson’: “So tired trying to see from behind the red of my eyes/ No better version of me I could pretend to be tonight.”

With a memorably lonesome guitar twang, ‘To Be Alone’ sounds as though it was recorded in Chicago in the 1930s. Hozier’s vocal performance is absolutely amazing. “You don’t know what hell you’ve put me through,” he croons, sounding old beyond his years. “To have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you/ To feel your weight in arms I’d never use/ It’s the God that heroin prays to.”

Lyrically, he can be quite macabre at times, with recurrent images of sex, death and decay. On ‘Like Real People Do’, he sings, “I had a thought, dear/ However, scary/ About that night/ The bugs and the dirt/ Why were you digging/ What did you bury/ Before those hands pulled me from the earth?”

‘In A Week’, a hauntingly slow duet with the golden-voiced Karen Cowley, is narrated by the corpses of two lovers rotting side by side in a field, slowly being devoured by Mother Nature. Once you realise what it’s about, it’s absolutely chilling: “I have never known peace/ Like the damp grass that yields to me/ I have never known hunger/ Like these insects that feast on me.”

Previous releases ‘Sedated’ and ‘From Eden’ are here too. There are plenty more delights (‘Arsonist’s Lullaby’, ‘Work Song’) before he closes with a live version of the folky ‘Cherry Wine’: “But I want it, it’s a crime/ That she’s not around most of the time.”

Some talents are simply indisputable, whatever your musical tastes. Count Hozier’s among them. This is the most dud-free Irish debut since Villagers’ Becoming A Jackal. Which is really saying something...