Hozier didn’t speak at length more than a few times during the opening of his three-night stay at L.A.’s Kia Forum this week, but when he did, he chose some lucrative topics. Presenting “Wildflower and Barley,” he talked about beekeeping, an interest he took up while living alone in the Irish countryside, and the results he’s noticed from the slightest modifications in homing instincts in a harsh climate and altitude.
Afterward, during the encore, as his band danced for six or seven minutes to the instrumental intro to “Nina Cried Energy,” he spoke about the impact of even the smallest changes in human habits on cultural shifts, drawing links between the grassroots of women’s suffrage, the American civil rights movement, LGBTQ rights and the need for a negotiated peace in Gaza.
Somewhere between these two speeches, it occurred to me that Hozier is the youngest, most popular rock star we have right now. Not because he urged his followers to contact their lawmakers, or the bees, although those things didn’t hurt.
Many music fans probably don’t even consider Hozier a “rock star” per se, possibly because they think he’s too good for the role. The Irish singer-songwriter has a perceived virtuosity and a precise virtuosity, both of which might well be disqualified by some aggressive standards. After he’d built up this status as a stellar, well-mannered, and generally admirable character, there was something funny about the fact that it took a single as unusual as “Too Candy” for him to finally score his first No. 1 hit in the U.S.… probably the first song he’d ever written, especially from a scoundrel’s perspective. It seems he’s not so serious that he can’t have some fun. role playing being an unserious individual.
Thoughts from you, Hozier and a monster, but only musically. In his two-hour-plus opening set on the Discussion Forum, staking out his own distinctly personal territory, he came off as nearly equal parts Joni Mitchell, Fairport Conference, Clannad and the Black Keys, claiming the best parts of the final price of 60 years of folk-rock conventions, but also an acuity with blues and big power chords amid intricate tunings, time signature changes and masterful fingerpicking. It sounded deeply polished, in the best sense, and like arena rock too — which is also a compliment, if only this time.
After touring globally behind his third album, last year’s “Unreal Unearth,” for a year and a half, his present set is awfully sharp. It kicked off with “De Selby (Half 1),” a rather ethereal song rooted in some obscure bit of European fantasy literature, with the English finally giving way to the Irish lyrics, subtitled on the huge screens on either side of the stage, before things got all religious and choral. Maybe nothing on that setlist sounds like your idea of a fun Saturday night, but the kickoff to that intro was (you guessed it) “De Selby (Half 2),” which delivered the heaviest rocking entry. Before long, Hozier was deep into his recently released EP of outtakes with “No One’s Soldier,” a deeply distorted rocker that sounds like something out of a rock and soul magazine that’s been overlaid with the tones of a jet engine slowing down.
“Still feeling good? I’ll do my best to mix it up, I swear to God,” he promised, somewhere around the time “Eat Your Younger” gave way to “Angel of Small Loss of Life and the Codeine Scene.” (How neither of those titles provided Hozier with his first U.S. No. 1 is anyone’s guess.) Hozier’s themes can be as bad as promised, in bits and pieces; this is a guy who themed his latest album around Dante’s circles of hell, and who reserves a stripped-down domestic abuse song (“Cherry Wine”) for the main encore slot on the B stage. But getting really depressed is an empty threat when more celebratory numbers, like the hand-clapping, soul-singing “Virtually (Candy Music),” are there to pick up the slack.
Though he’s only released three full-length albums in his 10-year recording career, Hozier already has a humbling wealth of potential live performance material, to the point where he’s already scrapped some pretty incredible Unreal Unearth songs that were included in last year’s showcases (like “Harm Will Get Achieved” and “Astract (Psychopomp)”) to make room for three newer songs from the pair of EPs he’s due out in 2024. “Too Candy” is clearly the star of the bunch — one of many songs on the set that showcase how much he loves a great finale, with bass and guitar mixing as a slightly obnoxious instrument beneath that simple pop hook. But when you watch him bring out opening act Allison Russell to coo with him on the same EP’s pop-folk “Wildflower and Barley,” you’d never guess he’d rise above a Cat Stevens level of meanness.
Highlights included “Eat Your Younger,” a bona fide hit—the Jonathan-Swiftie title, though—with some tremolo guitar licks that suggest what a powerful electric guitar soloist Hozier could be if he’d minimize himself more; “Dinner and Diatribes,” a livid number with a guitar riff so difficult it fools you into thinking it’s one of his bizarre time signature songs, despite it being a straight ¾; “Francesca,” which is made much less complicated with an anthemic chorus that has the drummer hammering away in quarter notes; and “It Will Come Again,” which had the star bringing out a resonator guitar for something as close as he can get to gutbucket blues.
Whether he’s performing acoustic or electric, fans can always be pleased with the large screens along the stage (vertical, perhaps in deference to TikTok technology) for offering useful glimpses of his phenomenally precise fingerwork. This provides an opportunity for a deeper appreciation of the model’s unique signature selection, the model’s signature move being to keep the index finger on his right hand perpetually floating and above the fray, as useless to him as a vestigial tail.
Singer Bedouine was his guest on all three nights at the Discussion Forum, showing up to recreate their duet on the new EP “That You Are.” However, pretty much all of his 2024 provided an opportunity for Hozier to party with his opening act, Allison Russell, who with him delivered the year’s most potent double bill. In addition to “Wildflower and Barley,” he brings Russell back for the closing encore, “Work Music,” describing her to the audience as “one of the great freedom singers of our time… and a really bright light in this world and a really bright light in my life.” He’s known for elevating Mavis Staples by name and vocal inclusion on the recorded version of “Nina Cried Energy,” in fact (a song that gives backup singer Melissa McMillan a showcase in live performance now)… and in his continued advocacy for Russell, Hozier clearly knows a Mavis successor when he hears one.
On Tuesday’s Discussion Forum, Hozier noted that Russell’s casting in “Hadestown” on Broadway, beginning next month, had just been announced that day. Russell used the event to bring a song known as “Persephone” back into her set — a song coincidentally named after her first girlfriend, despite the fact that the “Hadestown” character of that name she will play in New York may share few characteristics with the younger love she credits with helping save her life.
Russell’s 40-minute set was well-received by the Discussion Board audience, and his music has many parallels to Hozier’s personal style that helped make it a pure match, even before their shared philanthropic concerns. The Grammy-winning “Eve Was Black” was much more rock ’n’ roll than Americana in this live performance setting, and “Demons,” another cut from his album “The Returner,” got funkier and more throaty. “Superlover,” a song resurrected from his previous, pre-solo act, Birds of Chicago, had new lyrics, invoking Israel, Palestine and his current adopted home of Tennessee.
Russell also made a plug for National Suicide Prevention Month at the same time she was delivering the “Hadestown” information, saying, “To those who told me when I was 14 and 15, sleeping on park benches or in the … why I was safer in the cemetery than in the home of the foster family who called themselves my family but who brutally hurt me for over a decade … when I didn’t imagine I would live to see 18 … that (I could be) on Broadway right now, if you had told me life could be this good, I wouldn’t have believed you. If it could really get better for me, it could really get better for anyone.”
Another factor Hozier and Russell share: an almost pathological (in a great way) dedication to naming seemingly every crew member, in addition to every band member, at the top of a set. In Hozier’s case, that extends all the way down to the production assistant, house engineer, guitar tech, and carpenters. No matter what your mother may have told you about waiting for someone to treat “the support” well… maybe that should apply to our rock stars, too.