Hozier’s third album, the just-released “Unreal Unearth,” has serious conceptual underpinnings that include references to literary and even mythic tropes like Dante’s “Inferno.” Even with that time spent in the underworld, though, fans can assume that the Irish singer-songwriter will take them somewhere closer to heaven — and, for sure, “Church” — when he mounts a major U.S. tour this fall, including a sold-out stop at the Hollywood Bowl Nov. 4.
The artist more fully known on his passport as Andrew Hozier-Byrne took time out after a soundcheck on his European tour to talk with Variety about subjects including: singing with Brandi Carlile on a new song; why Monty Python makes him particularly excited about doing the Bowl; how “Take Me to Church” has only taken on more topical importance over the last 10 years; standing with Tennessee’s LGBTQ+ community; the impact of Irish literature on the new album; and, not incidentally, the meaning of all things.
You are playing some of the iconic U.S. venues on your fall tour, like the Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden and Red Rocks. Anything you’re particularly excited about with this tour?
We’re looking at a larger production than I’ve had before, including a nine-piece band that is the largest group of musicians I’ve worked with. And for me, the Hollywood Bowl is a huge deal. I’ve been looking at footage of that venue since I was a child. I think the very first time I ever set eyes on it was as a young kid when my dad got us into Monty Python very early, watching “Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl,” and for me it’s always been a little bit mystified as such an iconic place. It’s a huge landmark for me to play there, and Madison Square Garden. The fact that this tour is sold out — I’m just so grateful to have the support, and excited to be noticing a younger generation of fans also sort of arrive into the music in a way that has really encouraged me.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of “Take Me to Church.” It resounds in such positive ways, 10 years later.
I was astounded that a song that changes from 3/4 time to 4/4 time, that has these weird chromatic movements, that was recorded without a bass guitar, and the vocals of which were recorded in an attic, became the hit that it became. If I could have offered any message in a song, and if any of my songs would become a crossover hit and live the life that it’s lived, I’m proud that it’s that song in particular. And especially at a time like this, where I’m reminded, after the protests in Iran, that the song has taken on a life so far beyond what I imagined for it. [The song was sung in a YouTube video by 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh a short time before she was killed by Iranian authorities.]
The video for “Take Me to Church” a decade ago dealt with Russian homophobia, which was prescient. It’s not a theme that has gone away or stayed localized.
No, totally. At the time, some dismissive criticisms that I got of the music video were along the lines of, “Well, this is not our society. This is something that’s happening in a very faraway place.” I’d done a few interviews at the time where I talked about how, when it comes to online culture, increasingly that was becoming the platform for our discussions and how we interact in civil society with one another. I was saying that there’s no borders in that space, in an online space, so that sort of culture is something that could absolutely find its way over in our direction. And (it’s proven true), but it’s not just a Tennessee thing, not just an American thing. Currently within the EU, there are anti-LGBTQ zones in cities within the EU, in Poland, in Hungary. Globally, there’s this kind of huge backlash, and in some cases shows of paramilitary force, against the existence of trans people, drag shows, etc., which is so scary.
You’ve certainly done socially conscious themed things since then. You had a one-off song last year that was in response to the abortion rights issue and what was happening there. And you performed at the livestreamed “Love Rising” concert this year in Nashville that was raising funds to protest the anti-drag leglislation in Tennessee. You were the only Irishman on the bill, but you have enough friends associated with Nashville that maybe you’re almost an honorary Tennessean. Is there anything you can say about why those are important issues to you that you wanted to make a statement about?
With regards to Love Rising, I’m good friends with Allison Russell, and I’m very fortunate to be able to call her a friend. We had a nice leg of the (European) tour where we were on the same bill in Ireland and the U.K., and she had such a killer band. We had our first show together in Glasgow, and then it was kind of too short, really. I have such admiration for her and her work, and she’s just a great person…
Allison was fundamental in pulling Love Rising together and bringing so much artistic presence and talent to that stage, and I would always (respond to the call). I was in Nashville for the longest period I’ve ever enjoyed to get to spend time there, for like a month, doing rehearsals for this tour, so I was based in town for a while. And I made sure that I was able to get back…
The anti-drag bills just in legislation terms were really, really incredibly reactionary and quite ill-defined, and regressive in a massive way. When we don’t stand up for our values as citizens in a democracy, when you don’t show up in acts of solidarity, the boulder really rolls down the hill very fast. I’m always staggered at how quickly that happens or can happen. A lot of these fights are never really over, you know? Every generation is going to have to pick up their own fight and their own pushback when it comes to stuff like this. Apart from just wanting to show up for the queer and gay community in Nashville, I’m always staggered at how fast in the last 10 years, let’s say, we’ve gone from a place where these discussions weren’t an issue whatsoever. You know, drag has existed for a long, long time and trans people have existed for centuries, but it’s incredible in the last 10 years just how much they have been scapegoated. You’re talking about a tiny percentage of the population, so little gestures of support and solidarity like that, if they can go a long way, for me it is just important to show up for them.
On the new album, you don’t have features to speak of, except for Brandi Carlile on “Damage Gets Done.” Why did you seek her out on an album otherwise without guests?
Brandi is another incredible artist that I’m very, very, very fortunate to call a friend of mine. And apart from the admiration I have for her work and the kind of community-building that she does, there was something in that song, when we were approaching it, that felt like it had the spirit of a sort of a coming-of-age, power ballad-type thing. And we knew that it needed a voice that was as soaring and as powerful as Brandi’s. As I was writing it, I could only hear Brandi’s voice, and in her crazy, crazy schedule, she found time and we got it together, and I’m so happy and so grateful.It was one of those songs that I don’t know who could do it like Brandi, you know?
“Damage Gets Done” contains kind of an interesting sentiment: “I know being reckless and young is not how the damage gets done.” I understood it as saying, it’s better to have been reckless than not, even if you can look back later and think you should blame yourself for certain things; if you can be reckless and young, you should, even though you’ll have thoughts about it later. I don’t know if I’m taking that exactly the right way.
[Not entirely agreeing.] Yeaaah… a little bit. I suppose there’s an element of forgiveness you can have for yourself for being young. But also, it sort of looks back to a time of when you had a sense of wonder, when very little was enough to make you happy, and you sort of made your own adventures. Those kind of experiences you have in your late teens or early 20s where where you had very little to your name, and yet you took great excitement and wonder from little adventures that you’d go on. But then it’s also looking at the great scheme of life where you have that sense of growing older and growing disillusioned with the world around you. And you look at how destructive and harmful certain elements of the world that we live in are just inherently. It’s always kind of easy to see a young generation that really have very little to their name, have the least power of their respective populations, the least amount of wealth to their name, and are always oftentimes considered the troublemakers — those that are orderless, that are lacking in gratefulness, but really have so little to their name; they’ve no power whatsoever.
And the destructive elements of the world really aren’t carried out truly by the fun, silly, reckless actions of teenagers or 20-something-year-olds who are just trying to find their way in the world. So it’s looking back at that from that place we get to where we never really feel like we’ve arrive, but we’re always thinking, “Oh, I was happier one time, and I can’t remember why.” And it’s oftentimes when we had far less, and our values were different because we weren’t invested into material things necessarily. And I suppose that’s why that song takes place in the circle of greed [referring to the “Inferno” references peppered through the album].
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People will look at you and not think you have arrived at a jaded place, or that you’ve been affected a great deal by the last 10 years of being in the limelight or the focus of attention or anything… that you’re still a very idealistic person. Is there any secret to that for you, in terms of not feeling too much a part of the music industry that you carry world-weariness on your shoulders, or that you are able to focus on things that matter?
I feel grateful that I was kind of in a unique position, and very, very fortunate, that with the first song that I released, I was speaking really from the heart, and it was received in a way that was super-positive. The response to that first song was huge. So it set me on a path. I don’t know if I class myself as a… I think you used the term “idealist.” I have opinions about a lot of things in the world where you see injustice, conflict, violence and how global power systems work. And I’m not always the most optimistic person in the world with regards to where we’re headed with that. I feel very happy to have explored some of those themes with the third album, albeit in sometimes quite a fun way. I think it’s explored in a fun way in “Eat Your Young” or “Damage Gets Done.” I feel very fortunate that I have been given a license to just speak my mind in those things.
On your previous album, “Wasteland, Baby!,” you invoked the apocalypse, from the title forward. And in the few years that have transpired since then, we’ve had a global pandemic and other calamity. So how did you top the apocalypse on your new album? By invoking Dante’s circles of hell! You’re delving into classical mythology and metaphysics in kind of tying all things together. Did you have like a general idea of what you wanted to deal with on this album before you started, or did it develop?
I think it developed. I think a lot of the atmosphere of the time was finding its way into me and resonating with some of the stuff that I was reading at the time. Here was this global event that involved a huge amount of change. And with free time, I no longer had excuses to not read some of the classics and the epic, long-form poetry I had always wanted to, like “Metamorphoses” by Ovid, which is a Roman poet’s retelling of all of the world through myth. I wanted to play with these kinds of epic similes. I settled on using that structure of nine circles (from Dante’s “Inferno”) to reflect upon some of these personal experiences — without making a pandemic album or lockdown album.
There’s a song called “Through Me” on the “Eat Your Young” EP, which sort of opened the door into just writing with some sort of writing around those themes. There’s this great line of Dante’s from the text in “Inferno,” that appears above the door: “Through me, you enter into the population of loss.” And it just felt like, all of us were, in that moment, sort of entering into a population of loss in some way — that there was a huge amount to lose. There was a huge amount that was changing for a lot of people. And I think that I settled on using that structure of these nine circles to sort of credit or nod to just a journey into something through a doorway, and then hopefully, coming out the other side.
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You said in another interview that you had some songs before the pandemic that you threw out — you said the “woe is me love songs that we always end up writing somehow seem so silly.” Yet it feels feel like you found a way to incorporate some of that. “All Things End” seems to be a personal breakup song, but obviously from the title, it’s also very kind of existential. How much in the end do you feel it ended up being more of an album about — to speak in grand terms — the very nature of existence, versus very personal things that might’ve happened to you?
I think it’s one of those tricky things. Because you can reach to reconcile some of the not knowing in — as you put it — the harder or bigger questions of the predicament of being a human being, and living in a world with great turmoil, uncertainty and change. In the not knowing that is tied to the experience of being a human being, such a huge amount of our experience is to look out into the sky and just see emptiness forever. With all those big questions that you could ask yourself, I think the harder you reach to answer them, sometimes there’s so much more peace and assurance in bringing stuff to the personal, where actually we can look for meaning. In a way, it’s quite self-involved and arrogant to think that we’re gonna find it by looking externally. In the meaning that we find when we look internally, I mean, the internal space is equally infinite.
And it’s something I try to maybe explore or touch upon in like “De Selby,” and the first two songs of the album. It’s in the sort of personal, and in those quiet, kind of unremarkable moments of human relation, that are at at times miraculous and life-changing, that I definitely continue to find more meaning and more comfort than looking out in a grander way of: What does this all mean? And to credit instead the kind of the squeeze of a hand. Which just something I guess I tried to do in the last record, too. I suppose in some ways, yeah, it’s those two questions, seeing how the grand and the external and the enormous questions and the very small, everyday experiences can exist in sympathy. And you can reconcile the difficulty with one with the comfort of the other — if that makes sense.
You have some extremes on this album just in the imagery. In “I, Carrion (Icarian),” you’ve got Icarus in ecstatic flight, and lyrics describing just how great it feels to be up there in the atmosphere. But then in “All Things End,” you’ve got “a two-ton weight around my chest.”
That’s just the only way I’ve ever experienced happiness, and to throw a word like “love” into the mix — there’s a lot of love songs and there’s a lot of processing around love on the album, and my personal experiences with it, for sure. But for me, love is also so heavy with grief, you know what I mean? I don’t think you can experience love without grief. And so I guess it’s trying to credit the two and hold them each in each hand and try to credit the experience of both equally.
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As far as the literary references on the album, a lot of people will be familiar with Dante’s “Inferno,” and you would seem to be referencing Jonathan Swift a little in “Eat Your Young.” But “De Selby” is maybe deeper in the weeds. I had to look that name up, and found he is a fictional philosopher who shows up in the work of the Irish writer Flann O’Brien. What about that appealed to you that you thought this needs to be the title of the first two songs on the album (“De Selby Part 1” and “De Selby Part 2”)? I saw a quote from this fictional personality that said, “Human existence is a succession of experiences, each infinitely brief,” and I thought, well, that, that sounds like some of this album, a little bit.
Yeah, definitely, the device of sort of referencing De Selby there is exactly that. For people who are familiar with (the novel) “The Third Policeman” in particular, De Selby is this kind of lunatic philosopher. He’s constantly in the footnotes of the main character, who just can’t figure out if he’s a genius or a complete and utter nutcase. But there’s some sort of “Alice in Wonderland”/child-dream logic to the way he sees the world. And I was kind of leaning in on that, on that song. Also, he’s a character in a book about a man who doesn’t know he’s dead! So there’s also that element of the underworld. There’s a part of that character that’s obsessed with mirrors. He believes that in looking at anything that reflects life, you’re looking technically back in time, because light travels at speed. So he believes you’re looking in the past when you look in the mirror. He believes — and claims that he can prove — that if he has enough mirrors, he can see himself as a child. So it’s just this interesting sort of mindset.
There’s also an Irish philosopher called John Moriarty, who is a wonderful theologian and philosopher, and he has this great thought about how we live in a world of mirrors. In this one reflection about walking quietly in Connemara, he just talks about his experience of being back home, walking the country roads at nighttime, and being in such quiet and such darkness that you feel like you’re in the night that existed before night existed. And in that space, that mirrors have lost all power, if that makes sense. So it’s just (going to) a few Irish literary places, in that way. But “De Selby” just seemed like really a fun way to sort of package that, and play with a song also that can maybe exist in his mind, too.
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