Album review: Unreal Unearth is Hozier's finest record yet and has breathtaking moments

Hozier performing at the V Festival in Britain.

★★★★☆

During the pandemic, Ireland saw the best and worst of Hozier. He delivered a stunning rendition of the Parting Glass on the Late Late Show – a reading that was both a lament for those who lost in the preceding months, but one also invested with hope, humanity and defiance.

Yet the opposite effect was achieved when he covered Simon and Garfunkel in an empty, flood-lit Croke Park during a charity telethon. Though a fine showcase for his voice, his take on big-screen folk was bludgeoning and over the top. Hozier’s Bridge over Trouble Water was a road to nowhere.

Happily, the Wicklow artist’s third album, co-produced with Gossip and Bat for Lashes collaborator Jennifer Decilveo and Drake regular Daniel Tannenbaum, contains more of the former than the latter.

It’s his finest record yet and a project that suggests he has moved on confidently from the head-spinning success of his early hit, Take Me To Church. 

Unreal Unearth

Some moments are breathtaking –such as when the opening track De Selby (Part 1) segues into single De Selby (Part 2) – named for Flann O’Brien’s fictional philosopher – and Hozier switches from grainy croon to shutter-blowing force of nature.

Big is generally better where Hozier is concerned. He goes for broke on campfire goth-rocker Francesca. Fuelled by an ominous swampy bass, it lands like Bon Iver fronting Coldplay (not a bad thing, it turns out). Unreal Earth is less successful when Hozier tries to conjure with the funk-god within, as on the frankly quite annoying Anything But, where he sounds like Christy Moore pretending to be Sting.

Lyrically, Hozier has lots to say. He evokes Greek myth on the thrillingly subterranean Son of Nyx. Butchered Tongue is a lament for what was lost when English replaced the Irish language.

A roiling and emotive album culminates brilliantly with Abstract (Psychopomp). The billowing, bawling number shuffles from trip-hop to rafter-shaking balladry. It’s one among several stand-outs on a collection that sees Hozier reach for the sky and come away bearing fistfuls of stardust.