REVIEW: HOZIER - UNAIRED E.P.

4/5

Unearth Exhumed.

Taking us back to his church in the wild, this Sunday, it's been exactly a year since Hozier released his undeniable 'Unreal Unearth' LP. And yet he is still digging up new music for your Friday from soil to record crate. There was the 'Unheard' version of 'UU' mere months ago, and now we have another EP to bookend his classic, like last year's 'Eat Your Young' EP of his discography menu. After the unheard comes the 'Unaired' extended play and a big-three of tracks as Hozier, in black and white, lies on top of the unearthed dirt, exhausted with how much he's extended himself.

But you can hardly hear it, because going into battle, this Irishman is 'Nobody's Soldier', not losing a step, or his footing in the ground. All for a sublime single that could match his flurry of 'Eat Your Young', 'All Things End', 'Francesca', 'Unkonwn/Nth', and 'De Selby (Part 2)'. Let alone any of his greatest hits like his girl that "giggle's at a funeral" ("for all we know, death is fun" like a young Zoë Kravitz (as told in this month's Esquire) told her mother, Lisa Bonet, consoling her after she lost hers). Matching even the 'Long Way Home' of great Ray LaMontagne's latest LP, released on the same day, as it steps into its own power. "Choose between being a salesman or a soldier/Just let me look a little older/Let me step a little bolder/Choose between being a butcher or a pauper/Honey, I'm taking no orders/Gonna be Nobody's Soldier", Andrew sings like Springsteen for the soldier's still at war with mental health and anguish. He won't be complicit in their suffering, but he will stand with them.

'July' this August, is another new favourite that wouldn't have even been filler if it made the actual album. Extra special and playlist signature for this writer who was born on the 20th (not this year, hell, I'm almost 40). We can all sing along, in perfect time, to lines like, "Winter wore me out like I was Prada/Threw up on me when the night was through/You can keep a dream in your mind/Only to find it's the hope that was killing you/But you arrived like sunlight in the gloom/And burned off the haze when the year was still new" in wildflower and barley. But as this EP ends with the 'That You Are' collaboration with a beautiful Bedouine, after all that and this, we still are left itching for more from an artist who is painting brushstrokes with the grace of a Buckley. Jeff or Tim. "It's the sound of it that brings me there/This city locked into the song of prayer." Let's put our hands together in thanks, for all that Hozier has let air. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Playlist Picks: 'Nobody's Soldier', 'July', 'That You Are (Feat. Bedouine)'.