A young man with a knotted, old-man voice, the Wicklow-reared Andrew Hozier-Byrne is on the same page as George Ezra, though his version of folky blues is danker and more interesting by far. Opening track Take Me to Church – a No 2 single in Ireland – mourns a failed relationship by invoking grim religious imagery (“We were born sick … my church offers no absolutes”); the pastoral In a Week fantasises about dying in a field alongside his love and their bodies being eaten by animals. “I have never known hunger like these insects that feast on me,” he sings caressingly, the pace set by a single note plucked on a bass. That is Hozier’s debut album all over, presenting the 24-year-old as an old soul influenced by the sparseness and unfiltered melancholy of the Delta blues (with an improbable flicker of Elton John in Take Me to Church’s sweeping orchestral choruses). He’s a believable storyteller, a subtle guitarist and a composer of haunting melodies, making this album eminently worth exploring.
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