In 2014, Irish troubadour Hozier broke through in a big way with his self-titled debut album. This was the album which earned him his “Song Of The Year” Grammy nomination for the omnipresent hit “Take Me to Church.”
Now on the heels of his third album, Unreal Unearth, Hozier returns to KCRW for a long chat with his longtime pal Chris Douridas about the music that defines him. He’s breaking down his earliest memories of Thin Lizzy, and in particular the band’s frontman Phil Lynott who is considered a Dublin icon. Plus, he marvels over Ella Fitzgerald’s vocal prowess, introduces us to the Irish folk duo Ye Vagabonds — who he proclaims to possess a “blood harmony” despite not being blood related, and so much more.
Read on for Hozier’s song selections, and find out what it is about each of them that makes him care so deeply.
The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Thin Lizzy – “Waiting for an Alibi”
Thin Lizzy is a band mostly from the UK with some members — I believe — from the States. But the lead singer Phil Lynott is a Dubliner. He's one of Dublin's most famous exports, and as a result Ireland claims him as one of its own. There’s a statue of Phil holding his bass guitar out, and people would leave bass picks as a kind of an offering to him.
My uncle was big into Thin Lizzy, it was something that was always being played in my uncle's car. My cousins were into it… It was, sort of, as a kid Thin Lizzy was always being played … Never too far away. In fact, the first album I ever got was Live and Dangerous. It was given to me by my folks so I must have been maybe eight, nine, or 10… something like that. But I remember getting big into Thin Lizzy as a kid and discovering their kinds of textures, slap delays, the harmonized guitar solos, and stuff like that. It was exciting, and it's definitely something that reminds me of a certain childhood summer for sure.
Elbow – “New York Morning”
Guy Garvey's a lyricist who I really respect, and admire. There's a wonderful tenderness to his vocals, to his work. The opening of this one, “New York Morning,” is this kind of breathless description of the sprawling ambition of New York … Then he brings it to [a sense of] intimacy, then expands it out, then brings [the intimacy] right back. There's something wonderful about the refrain: “Everybody owns the great ideas, and it feels like there's a big one around the corner.”
It's that feeling of being in a city, that everybody's living on top of each other. “Oh my giddy aunt,” [another line from the song] is a very Northern English way of saying, “oh my gosh.” “Oh my giddy aunt, New York can talk, but where in all that talk is all the answers?”
It has this sense of wonder, activity, and bustlingness that he captures very beautifully in this song. And again, he brings it right back down to being something that's interpersonal and intimate. I think he has something special in this song.
Ella Fitzgerald – “How High The Moon”
Something I really enjoyed as a teenager was watching the ease with which Ella would forget a lyric, and then just riff. [In that] empty space, she would do an impression of somebody like Louis Armstrong … Something like that. I just love the in the moment flow of that. I think [she’s] one that vocally… There's very few [like her].
It's tough when I think of really truly incredible singers. Incredible voices … Yebba is somebody who I'm astounded by at the moment. [She] has these really invigorating, very fresh sounding [vocal] runs. It is incredibly creative, the way that she uses her voice. But Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist is somebody who I don't know if we will ever see the likes of again. There's part of me that just loves all these old jazz standards, and how cyclical their lyrics are. There's such intention to setting up a premise of a lyrical motif, and concluding it in a very successful way. It's something we don't really do so much in popular writing anymore.
And on this recording of “How High The Moon,” at one point [Ella Fitzgerald] jumps into scatting “Ornithology” by Charlie Parker which is this famous bebop composition. I remember hearing [both pieces] for the first time, and then putting it all together. When you’re 15 or 16, you're like “I had no idea that somebody could do that.” So yeah, as something that is an astounding vocal performance this just has to be mentioned.
Ye Vagabonds – “Lowlands Of Holland”
I hope you hear a lot more from [Ye Vagabonds] as the years go on. They’re a duo from Ireland, and I caught them at Vicar Street the last time I was home. They did this stunningly beautiful set. I think I would do them a disservice to say they're folk revival, but they have a naturalistic folk approach. A lot of the recordings [for their] albums are literally just them performing in a room. That's part of their approach, it’s a one take thing. They don't really do overdubs, or anything like that.
I hope Ye Vagabonds will do a few more appearances here in the States. I very nearly had them with me on the last few shows …
The first song that I heard of theirs was “Lowlands of Holland.” It is a folk song, it’s this kind of lament for a lost lover who was drowned at sea. The pair of them, they’re not brothers, but they have that blood harmony thing. They sing in such sympathy with one another. Their voices together and separately… They just tear my heart.
Van Morrison – “Sweet Thing”
[Such an important album for me] when I first heard it was Astral Weeks. And it continues to be. That album continues to be something of a holy space, a holy ground that you can walk back to, take your shoes off, [get comfortable]. “Sweet thing,” was [always] a favorite of mine from that album.