Hozier

Andrew Hozier-Byrne was born in Bray, on the coast of County Wicklow, in 1990, the son of a banker who played blues and jazz drums on the side. That household matters. He grew up with the old American forms in the room, the gospel and the blues, and you can hear both in how he sings. He went to Trinity College Dublin and left early; before that he had sung in Anuna, the choral group, which is where the church-sized weight in his voice comes from.

He records under one name now: Hozier. The first thing most people heard from him was begun in the attic of his parents’ house, and it carried him to the top of the American chart inside a year with no machine behind it.

What holds the work together is the tension he keeps returning to: faith and the body, devotion and the institutions that police it. He uses the language of the church to argue with the church. Raised Quaker in a country shaped by Catholicism, he writes from the edge of belief, looking in, and refusing to look away.