[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Today is St. Patrick's Day and coincidentally also the birthday of Ireland's own born in Bray in the county of Wicklow, Hozier. Hozier became a global sensation after the release of his debut single Take Me To Church which came out a decade ago this year.

[music Hozier – Take Me To Church]

Take me to church

I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies

I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife

Offer me that deathless death

Good God, let me give you my life

Alison Stewart: That's on won multi-platinum and appeared on a self-titled album which hit number two on the Billboard Album Charts. He went up himself in 2019 with the follow-up, Wasteland, Baby! reaching number one. Today he is releasing a new groove-tastic-sounding new EP titled Eat Your Young and announcing a tour and plans for a full album later this year. Hozier joins me now to talk about it. Happy birthday.

Hozier: Thank you so much. Thank you. It's great to chat with you.

Alison Stewart: I'm so curious because my birthday is the 4th of July and I know what that's like in the United States. I'm curious what it's like to be born on St. Patrick's Day in Ireland.

Hozier: Some similarities in that there's always a barbecue. [laughter] I'll be a bit more unpredictable in Ireland where it rains something like most of the years and people are always up for getting together and having a good time.

Alison Stewart: Barbecue and beer, St. Patrick's Day, 4th of July.

Hozier: There you go.

Alison Stewart: Together like that. [laughs].

Hozier: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: Why did you decide to release an EP today? Just a way to celebrate or just felt good, felt right?

Hozier: It just felt good. It felt like the right time to start rolling out this new music. As you know, it's always a new music Friday. It's like it's always going to be a Friday and just my birthday falls for it. Just everything just lined up. It just felt good. It felt right, so delighted for it to be today. It is a little bit of a gift. It keeps me out of trouble, also. I'm in New York on St. Patrick's Day. This absolutely keeps me on the straight and narrow to sit down and chat about the music.

Alison Stewart: It's only 1:30. There's time.

[laughter]

Hozier: Exactly. Give me a chance. [crosstalk] one opportunity.

Alison Stewart: The title track we're going to hear is Eat Young Young. This video that you posted on Twitter about how this song, two of these songs were about Dante's Seven Circles of Hell, Dante's Inferno, and Eat Your Young is gluttony, that's the third circle. I admit I had to hit them up. How did you get interested in Dante?

Hozier: It was more just a pandemic. Sitting down on those early long mornings and deciding to read some stuff that I had wanted to sit down and spend time with for a long time, but never had the chance to. The larger album takes the shape or follows a path, somewhat nodding to the shape of a descent, and then arranging them into their appropriate themes of Nine Circles and then the other way. Thankfully, it's a bit cheerier than that. It's not too tired, too glued to the literature in any way, shape, or form.

Gluttony for Eat Your Young seem to make sense and all things and it is heresy, I suppose.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for your gentle correction. It's Nine Circles of Hell. I appreciate that.

Hozier: Nine. There is there is nine. Did you say eight?

Alison Stewart: I said seven.

Hozier: Not seven.

Alison Stewart: It's Seven Deadly Sins. I think that's where my brain went.

Hozier: It's Seven Deadly Sins. You're right. You're absolutely right. That's right.

Hozier: Welcome [unintelligible 00:04:09]

Hozier: Though it is confusing because I think gluttony is one of the seven.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. Gracious, once again. My guest is Hozier. The name of the EP is Eat Your Young. I want to check out this track and let my audience hear it. What do you want them to listen for?

Hozier: If they're listening at first to All Things End or to Eat Your Young.

Alison Stewart: Eat Your Young.

Hozier: To Eat Your Young. I think I really enjoyed making this with Dan Tannenbaum and his wonderful team of musicians and production people. I think something that I love about it is the cinematic approach that Dan can take with some of his work. His string playing is across that I really enjoyed watching him do his thing. To me, the real spirit of the song is in the lyrics. It's playful. It's really tongue-in-cheek. It's what you call a very unreliable narrator. It's fun.

Alison Stewart: Here's Eat Your Young.

[music Hozier – Eat Your Young]

I'm starving, darling

Let me put my lips to something

Let me wrap my teeth around the world

Start carving, darling

I wanna smell the dinner cooking

I wanna feel the edges start to burn

Honey, I wanna race you to the table

If you hesitate, the getting is gone

I won't lie if there's something to be gained

There's money to be made, whatever's still to come

Get some

Pull up the ladder when the flood comes

Throw enough rope until the legs have swung

Seven new ways that you can eat your young

Come and get some

Skinning the children for a war drum

Putting food on the table selling bombs and guns

It's quicker and easier to eat your young

Alison Stewart: That's Eat Your Young from Hozier. It's on an EP that is out today. The groove is so good on that, first of all.

Hozier: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: It's a good groove. Why three tracks? Was it something specific about these three tracks that you wanted to release them as a unit?

Hozier: I think Eat Your Young was one of my favorites. I think it was nice to offer a little bit of each, a few different colors. Eat Your Young was one of my favorite things and has a very different pace and threw me as a song that was written earlier in the album sessions. It captures some of what I guess I was just reflecting on across a lot of the songs on the album. This idea of change and its idea of loss. I think that's what threw me what seemed like a fitting addition.

Alison Stewart: It seems you're going to release a really long album. You told CBS News this morning, it's 17 or 18 tracks long?

Hozier: Just about. The album is long. We're going to release a couple of other songs between then and now. It's also just to make sure that when the album drops that there's plenty of new stuff that people won't have heard. I'm proud of the collection of songs, I got to say. I'm really eager now to let people hear it.

Alison Stewart: How many songs did you start with? If you wound up with 17 or 18, what was the original batch that you edited from?

Hozier: We could have gone 22, 25. There was a lot that didn't quite make it. We could go with maybe 30 songs, something like that, near enough. There was plenty of work to choose from. There was moments of fruitful prolific music-making during that pandemic, those few years. There was moments of real quiet silence but I think it'll find its way in the end. There was a lot of ideas by the end.

Alison Stewart: How do you feel in those moments of quiet and silence? Is it peaceful and restful for you or do you get restless like, "I should be making. I should be thinking. I should be creating"?

Hozier: I do very well in quiet. I feel very at home being alone. [chuckles]. I have to say so. I'm okay with it. I think nearly to my detriment. It's a place that can really zone out and not feel under pressure to create. I think it's necessary to have those moments to recharge. Generally, I find it great to just be playful in that [sound cut] to just play without any sense of pressure.

Alison Stewart: Are you an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert?

Hozier: I think I'm an introvert in that I definitely recharge my batteries alone. I definitely long for that and need that time, need that space. I can function pretty well surrounded by people. I think that's the best part of the job. If ever it was the case that I wasn't, I've certainly learned to. It's just part of what we do also.

Alison Stewart: When you have 17 or 18 tracks, how do you think about the sequencing? What goes into the decision-making about the order? Yes, about the order. That's important. The way people consume it and for those of us who like to go beginning, middle, and end.

Hozier: That's always a challenge. It is a challenge. It was also an added little challenge to try and make that work while also hoping to keep the songs in line with the beams of the descending circles if that makes sense. For just that fact alone, it felt like it was a worthwhile challenge. To start with a descent and then go into limbo, and then lust and then gluttony, and then what I believe is greed, and then anger, then heresy, et cetera. There were times in the album making I thought that was an impossible task. I thought that that couldn't be done.

It's something that's felt rather than-- it's something that's felt. You hear the end of the song and you know what you want to hear next, if that makes sense. You know where the heart wants to go after that and you let that guide you.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned heresy, the song All Things End you've connected to the sixth circle. How is the song inspired by heresy?

Hozier: I suppose it's more again, in a playful way, in the strict definition of what something if it's heretical. All Things End could be considered a heretical statement from an old-school or fundamentalist religious viewpoint. The decision that, okay, all things and there is no such thing as something that's everlasting. Then also, it's actually more so that it's a breakup song. I suppose when you're in a relationship and you're so invested in it, it is at the end of the day something that you deeply believe in.

It's something that you have that is all-encompassing and holds all of your love and something you have faith in and something you have great belief in. When you have that conversation when you're confronted with that idea that it's ending or it's coming to an end something that's disintegrating in front of you, having to approach that feels like heresy. The idea that somebody would come to you and say this is ending, and it feels a little bit in the moment. It's just something you believe in. It's something you have every faith in and it's falling apart. That's really where it's heresy.

Alison Stewart: This is All Things End.

[music Hozier – All Things End]

A two-tonne weight around my chest feels like

It just dropped a twenty-story height

If there was anyone to ever get through this life

With their heart still intact, they didn't do it right

The last time I felt your weight on my chest, you said

"We didn't get it right, but love, we did our best"

And we will again

Moving on in time and taking more from

Everything that ends

And all things end

All that we intend is scrawled in sand

And slips right through our hand

And just knowing

That everything will end

We should not change our plan

Whеn we begin again

Alison Stewart: That's All Things End from Hozier. There's so many cool layers on that. Were the elements recorded separately or did you do them all at once in the studio? What was that recording process?

Hozier: They recorded separately. I think we jammed-- this is the first group of songs that I've ever co-written in earnest where I've really gotten together with another producer, another songwriter, and sat down and just made music together. I think after that period of isolation, after the pandemic, I really cherished that. I really enjoyed that. I really loved getting into a room making noise with other people. The way that song happened, we just jammed it out and I fell into the idea very quickly jamming with Danny.

The way like a lot of the songs, we would just take those sessions of us jamming, he would send me a balance of that. Then I would go away and I would put the song together, come up with a melody and its lyrics, and put it down. What we ended up doing for that is, I just recorded demo vocals for that. As is often the case and it's often the case with some of like even I think you played Take Me To Church earlier on, we just kept the demo vocals where it's like you record it once and then you try so much. You go back in the studio and you set up much nicer.

You have much better, more appropriate surroundings, better gear, better equipment, better microphones, and you try and you record, but there's some vibe to that performance.

In fact, those vocals were recorded in my Airbnb. Just me and my laptop and whatever gear I had a little preamp and a microphone. They were recorded, but it was all pretty much was all Los Angeles. It was all LA.

Alison Stewart: Sometimes authentic is better than polished.

Hozier: Yes. That's it. Yes, exactly. Music is 80% feel. Anyway, a lot of the time.

Alison Stewart: We'll continue our conversation with Hozier about his new EP Eat Your Young after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guess is Hozier. The new EP Eat Your Young is out today. You tweeted this very funny joke about your next album. You said, "My next album is four tracks long two of which are a recital of Samuel Beckett's Not I recorded with marshmallows in my mouth. For people who don't know about this piece, it's a woman who suddenly gets the ability to speak again. Am I talking about the right thing?

Hozier: Yes. It's hard to pinpoint. I was going to mess around and say that wasn't a joke, that was absolutely deadly serious. Not I is a very intense, very quite uncomfortable listen. It's quite an uncomfortable watch. I don't know if it's about a woman who's just regained the ability to speak, it's very hard to pinpoint usually what Samuel Beckett what his starting point was. It was this very eerie-- it was all a theatre of the absurd, but it's just a mouth. It's just a mouth floating on a stage.

You can't see anything but this mouth that's just talking to itself in this very intense manic internal monologue that's wildly erratic and at times in distress and at times, hysterical. It's just non-stop for about 5, 10 minutes. It's a really uncomfortable lesson. It's a great piece of theatre.

Alison Stewart: I'm glad I just pulled 30 seconds of it for us to listen.

Hozier: No way.

Alison Stewart: We're public radio nerds. This is from The Guardian side actor Lisa Dwan, doing Not I.

Lisa Dwan: The ray of light came and went came and went such as the moon might cast. Drifting in and out of cloud but so dulled. Feeling, feeling so dulled. She did not know what position she was in imagine! What position she was in! Whether standing or sitting but the brain what? Kneeling? Yes whether standing or sitting or kneeling but the brain. What? Lying. Yes, whether standing or sitting, kneeling or lying but the brain still still in a way for her first thought was oh long after sudden flash brought up as she had been to believe with the other waifs in a merciful--

Alison Stewart: It's exhilarating in a way and it's mania.

Hozier: It's exhilarating and it's mania. This is a really weird memory from the pandemic. My birthday obviously fell around then but I was given a book of Samuel Beckett's works from my family and I do remember at some weird quiet moment, I decided to sit with the script of that play. I just read it out loud to my empty house and I did find it comforting because it was so manic. When you had all this pent-up energy and all this pent-up-- I just tried to read it aloud and there's something very so weirdly it is exhilarating. I have heard as well too when that first debuted.

They knew that it was people were really going to be uncomfortable with it so they unplugged all of the light bulbs, they screwed out all the light bulbs in the men and women's toilets and they blacked out the exit signs. They broke all the rules so that there was no light whatsoever that could be seen but the light that shines on that mouth in this one. It's as oppressive as possible that it's as uncomfortable and is insane. It's a great-- but that's Beckett. It was more just the worst career choice I ever could make is just recording that over two tracks, marshmallows in my mouth, just thought that would be funny.

Alison Stewart: All the best. You sound like you're a reader. What are you reading?

Hozier: What am I reading at the moment? I was just given a copy of Rick Rubin's book about creativity recently, so I'm nowhere near, I've only just started it and yes, that's the last thing I picked up.

Alison Stewart: Oh, it's so good. We had him on the show. I talked to him for 40 minutes. It's just an amazing book. You'll get so much out of it. He's just such a guy who knows how to get the best out of people and also get people to want to get the best out of themselves.

Hozier: Yes, totally. It's an incredible legacy of his vision, of his instinct. It is amazing.

Alison Stewart: Let's get back to your EP. I want to play ‎Through Me (The Flood). When did you write this?

Hozier: I wrote that this was earlier in the pandemic I think, this was like 2020 at some point. I think the flood title is, there was two things that went into this. Sitting down with those poems. There is a chapter in metamorphosis called The Flood, which is just a telling of the Roman interpretation or the Greek interpretation of that biblical idea of the flood. It was at the time there was so much loss and there was this tidal wave of grief and loss that was sweeping across the world after March, 2020.

It was more just sitting in that and trying to make sense of that on an individual scale against that on a macro scale on such the enormity of what was happening at the time. It's just a song about not resisting the moment.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to ‎Through Me (The Flood).

[music Hozier – Through Me (The Flood)]

Picture a man

Seen like a speck out from the shore

Swimming out beyond the breakers

Like he's done his life before

He feels a coming of a squall

Will drag him out a greater length

But knows his strength, and tries to gather it

And he swims on

Turning back to shore again

Above the outer atmosphere

Of a world he's never seen

And looking down to his new home

He feels the rising of a wave and knows at once

He will not weather it like that man

I lookеd down into the depths when I mеt you

I couldn't measure it

Anytime I'd struggled on

Against the course out on my own

Every time I'd burn through the world, I'd see

That the world, it burns through me

But when I (I), I'd let go (I'd let go)

My struggling form

Alison Stewart: The EP is called, Eat Your Young. It is out today. Hozier, when will we get the full album?

Hozier: Late summer. It is a short few months away I guess, but I think in late summer we'll be dropping the full body of work.

Alison Stewart: The tour kicks off when?

Hozier: The tour kicks off, I will be back in the US in September and I think tickets are either just gone on sale or about to go on sale. Can check the website, but yes, we'll be hitting up a few spots for sure. I'm back in the US for a few shows later this year also, so I'm really excited for that.

Alison Stewart: Yes, we'll be seeing you at Madison Square Garden in September, which is very exciting.

Hozier: Yes, indeed.

Alison Stewart: The name of the EP is Eat Your Young. It is out today. It is from Hozier whose birthday also happens to be today. Once again, happy birthday to you.

Hozier: Thank you. Thank you so much. It was great to talk

 

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