Album Of The Week: Unreal Unearth by Hozier

If I was going through any type of heartbreak when listening to this album, some of these songs would have undoubtedly ended me. I’ve never been a massive Hozier fan- don’t shoot me- because ‘Take Me To Church’ was so overplayed when it first came out that I’ve rarely listened to his music since. And although he is not really the sort of thing I’d choose to listen to; this album is absolutely insane. His outstanding vocals aside, Hozier’s lyricism is out of this world. I’ve heard people call him a poet before, and with Unreal Unearth I couldn’t agree more.

With his third album, Hozier draws inspiration from Greek mythology, his Irish roots, personal experiences and most importantly, Dante’s “Inferno”. A set of poems drawn from 14th century “Divine Comedy”, which Hozier decided to read during the pandemic as he’d always wanted to and found himself with time on his hands. What I love about the album is that the tracks are grouped into theme depending on which circle of Hell they’re about. As you can imagine, this means that the album explores so many subject matters with the common denominator of human suffering. Hozier has made it clear he doesn’t believe in Heaven or Hell, but he’s talked about his certainty that everyone goes through their own personal Hell at least once in their lifetime, making it through to the other side if they persevere. This record explores this inevitability, but it keeps coming back to the idea that the beauty on either side will have been worth going through Hell. The experience of our own personal “Hell” is out of our control, he says, but through his own experiences he shows that some things and people are worth it.

The music ranges so vastly, going from a pop duet with Brandi Carlisle (‘Damage Gets Done’) to a wordless, end-of-the-world orchestral piece (‘Son of Nyx’) to gospel sounding ‘All Things End’. The only constant is Hozier’s recognisable powerhouse voice.

Unreal Unearth starts off with ‘De Selby (Part 1)’ and ‘De Selby (Part 2)’. For these songs, Hozier bases himself off a character from a novel by Flann O’Brien. Over fingerpicked guitar, the singer explores De Selby’s philosophy that the darkness of nightfall is freeing, meaning you can leave things behind. He then slips into Gaelic, as he turns the idea towards a love story. In these verses, he sings softly and melodiously that although the loved one is bright and full of light to him, their mutual darkness seeps into each other in a way that they almost metamorphose into one entity. Poetic right? It’s the first time Hozier honours his Irish roots by singing in Gaelic, but it makes for a beautiful choral chant. In ‘De Selby (Part 2)’ he continues with this idea of darkness between lovers. But with the riff of an almost disco-like backdrop, it makes for such a fun-sounding melody that you find yourself nonchalantly singing along to lyrics like “When you fall on me like night […] I wanna run against the world that’s turning; I’d run so fast I’d outpace the dawn” like it’s not a verse of poetry.

The next song, ‘First Time’ to me just shows how stunning Hozier’s lyricism is because essentially, this one is just a track about reminiscing a past relationship. But he turns every simple idea into a masterpiece. For example, instead of saying something like “Your kiss made me forget everything else”, he sings “The first time that you kissed me I drank dry the river Lethe “. The River Lethe being mythicized for wiping clean every memory of your past existence. I mean, come on. Pretty smooth. And then later, Hozier just drops a full-on poem in the form of a verse.

“These days I think I owe my life; To flowers that were left here by my mother; Ain't that like them, gifting life to you again; This life lived mostly underground; Unknowing either sight nor sound; 'Til reaching up for sunlight; Just to be ripped out by the stem; Sensing only now it's dying; Drying out then drowning blindly; Blooming forth its every colour; In the moments it has left; To share the space with simple living things; Infinitely suffering; But fighting off like all creation; The absence of itself”. And knowing full well what he just did, he quite literally follows up with the lyric “Anyway” and proceeds to sing the chorus like it’s nothing.

One of my favourite songs from the album and the one that drew me to it originally is ‘Francesca’. Going off the second circle of Hell, this song represents lust. In his epic poem “Divine Comedy”, Dante meets Francesca da Rimini whose story involves falling in love with her husband’s brother and pursuing an affair with him. They both end up killed by the husband in a fit of rage when he finds out. Much like the violent winds that the sinners in this second circle of Hell must endure as punishment, ‘Francesca’ feels like a storm. With heavy rock riffs, sudden roars of passion and doom-like echoey vocals at the end of the track, it indeed feels like a whirlwind of intensity.

Okay, keeping in mind I am not one for romance- ‘I, Carrion (Icarian)’ is the most beautiful love song I’ve ever heard. With his fingerpicked acoustic guitar at the forefront of cellos and violins, Hozier turns the myth of Icarus into his own love story. In case you’re unfamiliar with Greek mythology, Icarus was gifted wings of feather and wax but when he flew too close to the sun, he fell to his death. He was so enthralled by the experience of being sky-bound that he didn’t even realise he had died. Hozier plays with this story by painting the picture of a love so strong that his lover makes him feel as light as if he is “floating like a feather on the sea”. He feels convinced that he could never fall from the height this love holds him at. “And though I burn, how could I fall? When I am lifted by every word you say to me. If anything could fall at all, It’s the world that falls away from me”. My take on which circle of Hell this song symbolizes is gluttony, since it isn’t lust, but I could be wrong. In any case, it comes back to Hozier’s attitude that no matter what happens after the fall, the flight towards the sun was always going to be worth it. His soft breathy voice makes this song sound like an angelic lullaby. ‘I, Carrion (Icarian)’ makes you feel like you’re floating on a warm cloud, as Hozier hums of Greek mythology.

And with the final track, ‘First Light’, the narrator has come back up after having been through Dante’s nine circles of Hell. This article would be interminably long if I were to go through each song, though I wish I could. But the key word as you’ve noticed, is poetry. That’s what Unreal Unearth is, much like Hozier’s previous albums. Whether you like his music or not, if you like lyricism, I beg you to listen to this record.

By Alice Charlton