Wasteland, Baby! - Hozier: Review
Andrew Hozier-Byrne
known professionally as Hozier is an Irish singer-songwriter who rose to fame in late 2013 on the back of his breakthrough hit song Take Me To Church. He channeled elements of blues and folk music into his debut album Hozier all the way back in 2014 and was largely silent for years after. Until late 2018 when he dropped the critically acclaimed and much loved Nina Cried Power EP and announced a long awaited follow-up sophomore album shortly after.
Review By Lav:
Even though its been a while many of us probably still have the first time we heard Take Me To Church stuck in out memory banks somewhere. The song is an excellent and bombastic pop-rock tune with strong roots in blues and folk music and a spectacular performance from Hozier. His debut album lived up moderately to they hype and I remember in what is now a long lost review giving it a 7/10 and being excited for his future as an artist. This only multiplied once I heard the Nina Cried Power EP which specifically shines in its brilliant title track, and has only one real down point. But the problems for this project started piling up before the release date was even close. Underwhelming singles dropped one after another promoting the release of the project, and once the tracklist was revealed I got an initial impression that listening to the album completely confirmed for me, that Hozier doesn't understand what made his music good in the first place.
The two songs Hozier brought over from his Nina Cried Power EP help show the dichotomy of this albums work. The title track to thar work Nina Cried Power matches the spectacle of Take Me To Church and the two are runaways for his best work. As he belts out the "Cried Power" refrain over the hook it reminds of musical histories greatest performers and his vocals are killer from start to finish. The track is a perfect capturing of everything that makes his aesthetic so captivating and executed to perfection. Shrike on the other hand presents a real mystery as to how it ended up getting a spot on the album at all, much less in the face of the two better tracks also on the EP. It isn't one of the worst tracks on the project and even has some moments of admittedly sexy vocalizing but is far too boring to be considered a good track, the sheer similarity of song after song on this project starts to blend a lot of them together and Shrike is a big victim of that phenomenon.
The two other promotional singles share a nearly identical match-up, as I was very neutral on both when they were initially released but seeing them in the context of the album has driven a big wedge. Almost (Sweet Music) is a song that helps make a strong introduction to this project and one that I have come around to in a big way. It's a solid tune with an even better performance that is hard to not get stuck in your head once you've heard it. The mirror image is the absolutely nauseating Movement
a song far too boring to stand out among elevator jazz and on the suffers from horrible and uninteresting songwriting, I can't rationalize why this was released as a single.
So that is basically every track on this album. They all fall into the so boring it could put you to sleep category of the fantastic example of blues inspired rock. The next track No Plan is a boring and uninspired tune that tries to hit you with a cool introductory moment but it sounds awful and doesn't stick, then the track spends the rest of its time fading out slowly. Later on Talk and As It Was represent back to back tracks that fail to make any impact as Hozier stumbles through a complete lack of songwriting like he just woke up and recorded these songs on the fly. As It Was is particularly close to actually achieving something but completely gives it up when the middle of the track becomes completely stagnant. Once again back to back in the tail end of the album Would That I and Sunlight aren't offensively bad songs but they leave a lot to be desired and it makes you wonder why Hozier chose to leave all these mediocre tracks in on his record that is nearly an hour long, it feels like the 5 years between albums made his team feel like they needed to deliver a lot of material and the result is so many underwhelming tracks.
These are all bad choices to put on an album but not necessarily bad, like really bad, songs. To Noise Making (Sing) is a bad song, like a really really bad song and one of the worst I've heard all year. Starting with its horrible structure that makes no sense, there is no rise or build at any point as Hozier just throws whatever ideas he can come up with at you one after another. And for a track with such an abstract approach it is horrible poppy and overproduced way beyond anything Hozier should be touching in his style. It contains an awful sing-songy chorus with chorus vocals that make absolutely no sense being placed in this context. It takes everything in me not to turn off the album and never listen to it again the moment this song comes on.
So what that leaves us with is two pretty good songs and two really good songs. First up is Nobody one of the better ballads that has some pretty tight songwriting and Hozier brings it with a pretty personal performance. As well as Be another moderately quiet song that packs a lot of punch, the only issue is that the songs run-time is about double what it should be, which pushes my theory that Hozier's label wanted this thing to be as long as possible, but compared to the rest of the songs it is far more interesting.
Finally the only two other track we haven't talked about yet are some killer ones. Dinner & Diatribes is the best non single on the album as it has a killer build and it pays off huge on one of the projects best choruses. It has some killer composition and the tight songwriting that so many songs on this album so desperately need to be better at. Finally the title track and closer is a comprehensive and fantastic ballad, Wasteland Baby! closes the album in a perfect way with one of its most lowkey tracks that shows off Hozier's raw talent in a way that is so underutilized across the album.
There is probably about a half hour of good to great material to be found here, the problem is that at 56 minutes long that leaves a lot of filler, which ranges from completely forgettable to absolutely abhorrent. With an album so split it is hard to separate is from its highs and lows and it forces me to settle on a very neutral score for an album that caused a lot of non-neutral feelings. 5/10
The two songs Hozier brought over from his Nina Cried Power EP help show the dichotomy of this albums work. The title track to thar work Nina Cried Power matches the spectacle of Take Me To Church and the two are runaways for his best work. As he belts out the "Cried Power" refrain over the hook it reminds of musical histories greatest performers and his vocals are killer from start to finish. The track is a perfect capturing of everything that makes his aesthetic so captivating and executed to perfection. Shrike on the other hand presents a real mystery as to how it ended up getting a spot on the album at all, much less in the face of the two better tracks also on the EP. It isn't one of the worst tracks on the project and even has some moments of admittedly sexy vocalizing but is far too boring to be considered a good track, the sheer similarity of song after song on this project starts to blend a lot of them together and Shrike is a big victim of that phenomenon.
The two other promotional singles share a nearly identical match-up, as I was very neutral on both when they were initially released but seeing them in the context of the album has driven a big wedge. Almost (Sweet Music) is a song that helps make a strong introduction to this project and one that I have come around to in a big way. It's a solid tune with an even better performance that is hard to not get stuck in your head once you've heard it. The mirror image is the absolutely nauseating Movement
a song far too boring to stand out among elevator jazz and on the suffers from horrible and uninteresting songwriting, I can't rationalize why this was released as a single.
So that is basically every track on this album. They all fall into the so boring it could put you to sleep category of the fantastic example of blues inspired rock. The next track No Plan is a boring and uninspired tune that tries to hit you with a cool introductory moment but it sounds awful and doesn't stick, then the track spends the rest of its time fading out slowly. Later on Talk and As It Was represent back to back tracks that fail to make any impact as Hozier stumbles through a complete lack of songwriting like he just woke up and recorded these songs on the fly. As It Was is particularly close to actually achieving something but completely gives it up when the middle of the track becomes completely stagnant. Once again back to back in the tail end of the album Would That I and Sunlight aren't offensively bad songs but they leave a lot to be desired and it makes you wonder why Hozier chose to leave all these mediocre tracks in on his record that is nearly an hour long, it feels like the 5 years between albums made his team feel like they needed to deliver a lot of material and the result is so many underwhelming tracks.
These are all bad choices to put on an album but not necessarily bad, like really bad, songs. To Noise Making (Sing) is a bad song, like a really really bad song and one of the worst I've heard all year. Starting with its horrible structure that makes no sense, there is no rise or build at any point as Hozier just throws whatever ideas he can come up with at you one after another. And for a track with such an abstract approach it is horrible poppy and overproduced way beyond anything Hozier should be touching in his style. It contains an awful sing-songy chorus with chorus vocals that make absolutely no sense being placed in this context. It takes everything in me not to turn off the album and never listen to it again the moment this song comes on.
So what that leaves us with is two pretty good songs and two really good songs. First up is Nobody one of the better ballads that has some pretty tight songwriting and Hozier brings it with a pretty personal performance. As well as Be another moderately quiet song that packs a lot of punch, the only issue is that the songs run-time is about double what it should be, which pushes my theory that Hozier's label wanted this thing to be as long as possible, but compared to the rest of the songs it is far more interesting.
Finally the only two other track we haven't talked about yet are some killer ones. Dinner & Diatribes is the best non single on the album as it has a killer build and it pays off huge on one of the projects best choruses. It has some killer composition and the tight songwriting that so many songs on this album so desperately need to be better at. Finally the title track and closer is a comprehensive and fantastic ballad, Wasteland Baby! closes the album in a perfect way with one of its most lowkey tracks that shows off Hozier's raw talent in a way that is so underutilized across the album.
There is probably about a half hour of good to great material to be found here, the problem is that at 56 minutes long that leaves a lot of filler, which ranges from completely forgettable to absolutely abhorrent. With an album so split it is hard to separate is from its highs and lows and it forces me to settle on a very neutral score for an album that caused a lot of non-neutral feelings. 5/10
