Hozier in Marlay Park review: Mild-mannered musician transforms into rock star

Hozier

Marlay Park, Dublin

★★★★☆

We looked everywhere around Marlay Park, but we couldn’t find the long-haired, long-limbed, mild-mannered, quiet-spoken, almost ill-at-ease-on-stage musician we first encountered about ten years ago. Instead, we discovered a rock star overseeing a sold-out open-air show to which many people had flown from various parts of the world. Who is this guy?

“Well, Dublin,” says Andrew Hozier Byrne, “how the f**k are you?” Throughout this almost two-hour, 20-song concert, Dublin shouts back the same question, but an answer isn’t required because Hozier is doing splendidly, thank you very much. There are numerous reasons for his general sense of stability, the primary one being the commercial success of last year’s third album, Unreal Unearth, particularly in the US. Indeed, not only has the album reached the top spot in Billboard’s Top Alternative, Folk, and Rock categories, but an album off-cut single, Too Sweet (released over three months ago), topped the US charts. Record books have it that Hozier became the first Irish act to top the Billboard Hot 100 in almost 35 years (since Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U in 1990), but something was missed by the statisticians: Hozier is the first Irish act since U2 to tour the US so painstakingly. Give or take incursions into other territories, he has spent much of the past nine months whipping Unreal Unearth’s songs into shape by criss-crossing the US playing big theatres and large open-air venues.

Who is this guy? He’s the guy who is pretty much on top of the pile, wearing a three-piece suit with his white shirt unbuttoned to the vee of where the waistcoat starts. His attire and demeanour match the innate sophistication of his R&B/soul/blues music, the strength of which doesn’t necessarily hinge on cleverness but on how it’s performed. As someone who was raised on rhythm and blues (or so the song goes), Hozier’s understanding of the form is a given, but there’s a huge difference between knowing what to do and knowing how to do it. As befits a bunch of songs that have been honed to within an inch of their lives, the six musicians (two of whom are Irish) and a pair of vocalists gathered around Hozier for his Unreal Unearth tour dates are beyond watertight. So, yes, they know how to do it.

Of the 20 songs, six are from Unreal Unearth, which indicates the set list has evolved from those initial months of essentially promotional shows and has settled into an even-handed selection from each of his three albums. The first two rock-oriented songs, Eat Your Young and Jackie and Wilson, ease the capacity crowd into the bright, dry evening mood, while the gentler From Eden, and To Be Alone kick-start the crowd swaying to and fro. Francesca, meanwhile, delivers granite-hard riffs one wouldn’t usually expect from Hozier but which lifts the concert to a different level. It continues in that vein, the quiet/loud dynamic of bruising R & (De Selby Part 2, Too Sweet, Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene, Take Me to Church) running in parallel with exceptional examples of seriously intimate soul/pop ballads (Like Real People Do, Movement).

It rained, of course, but that also played a part in the show’s success, notably when Hozier popped up on a smaller stage to sing two of his most beautiful songs – Cherry Wine and Unknown Nth. It may have been a trick of the light, but as the drops fell on to his shoulders, the image was more of a vulnerable songwriter doing what he does for the love of it than a world-conquering rock star counting the shekels. The gig drew to a close with the highly politicised, Palestine-referencing Nina Cried Power, followed by Work Song, which had people happily singing its refrain ‘When my time comes around, lay me gently in the cold dark earth …’ on their way to the exit signs.