“There’s definitely a lightness and a sort of openness that I’ve experienced being in LA, and finding the kind of communities that I found here in working on this record,” the “Take Me To Church” singer says earnestly, without cracking a smile. “That definitely found its way under my skin a little bit for sure, and I can see on the album as well […] there’s something of the weather that gets into the work.”

Songs written in his typically rainy hometown of Wicklow (“To Someone From A Warm Climate,” for example) feel darker than California-composed tracks. A departure from his debut and sophomore releases, Hozier’s newest album shifts from synths to soul to 90s grunge. It’s political, personal, unpredictable and — credit to the City of Angels — occasionally hopeful. 

Photo by Ruth Medjber

The structure of Unreal Unearth is loosely based on Dante’s Inferno. Hozier, ever the literato, assembled his 16-track album into circles as a nod to the Italian epic. There’s a descent into something like a hellscape, a grave loss and an ascension out the other end. “One bright morning changes all things / soft and easy / as your breathing,” begins the final track, “First Light.” It’s this song that most closely reflects where the artist is on his own life journey. 

“I feel like […] taking a deep breath and seeing the sky for the first time, or as if for the first time in a long time,” he reveals. “I hit my walls and my challenges over the last three, four years and contended with the futility of making work, or the usefulness of making work. And I’m glad to say I confronted those questions, and I’ve gained a better relationship with my work [and with] that feeling of gratefulness. […] That lifting that is accessible not only at the end of something but is accessible in the every day also.”