Every year there’s one artist who seemingly comes out of nowhere and takes the music industry by storm. Many times it’s an artist who has one big hit then disappears from the face of the earth. It’s usually due to the lack of depth on their record, but every once in a while a new talent breaks through for all the right reasons. This time around it’s the latter as Irish singer-songwriter Andrew Hozier-Byrne has crafted a start-to-finish masterpiece.
Hozier’s self-titled debut is a brilliant mix of gospel, blues, soul, and stellar songwriting. It’s the kind of record that makes pop music feel far less disposable and the Grammys appear like they know what they are talking about for once. Speaking of the Grammys, this was the first show Hozier played after his stunning performance with the one and only voice of a generation, Annie Lennox. It was one of the most talked about performances at the annual awards show, if not the absolute best.
The breakthrough song “Take me to Church” was rightfully up for Song of the Year, but lost out to Sam Smith. While not quite as bad as the clueless Grammy judges awarding a comedy duo for Best Metal Performance, it certainly was a snub in my book.
If you were a Hozier early adopter and find yourself overdosing from the enormous success of “Take Me to Church,” you’re not alone. The sudden success led to more than 86 million YouTube views, surprising even the man himself. Hozier told Rolling Stone, “I remember someone texting me to say it was getting 10,000 views an hour,” he says. “I went home that night and watched the views rise hour by hour. It was just crazy.” No need to fret though as the album as a whole is deep with strong tracks—and backed by an even deeper live show.
Soulful, bluesy, hauntingly gorgeous, it’s the perfect mix of old and new, both in terms of technology and songwriting. I couldn’t really figure out why there was a MacBook Pro on stage since the record has such a timeless feel to it, but whatever it was doing up there, his live band was absolute perfection and never missed a beat.
At one moment during the show Hozier took to the stage solo and had the entire sold out Fox Theater in the palm of his hand, hanging on every last note. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to do and he made it look easy.
Highlights from the set that evening were many, but the true standouts for me were the songs “Jackie and Wilson” and my favorite track, “Angel of Small Death”—which has nothing to do with the Slayer classic, of course. The Fox was taken to an entirely different place once Hozier lit up the stage with a breathtaking version of “Take me to Church,” but it wasn’t as if the capacity crowd was waiting around all night for just that one song.
Bottom line: Hozier is the real deal and he absolutely deserves your attention for crafting one of the most memorable debut records I have heard in years. He’s certainly going to outlive his fellow class of 2015 Grammy nominees.
Check out higher res pics from the show in the gallery here.
