“I wanted to be light and playful with it,” Andrew Hozier-Byrne has said about the subject matter of his third album. Now, given that this is a man whose big hit single, Take Me to Church, was about the evils of Catholicism and had a video depicting homophobic abuse in Russia, who also has a love song sung from the perspective of two decomposing corpses, and whose last album had an armageddon theme, it may not be a surprise to learn that the thing he intends to be light and playful with is Dante’s Inferno.
Unreal Unearth’s 16 songs are supposed to be structured to reference the nine circles of Hell, and show that Hozier spent his pandemic at home in County Wicklow doing some heavy reading. He digested Ovid’s Metamorphoses too. His song Francesca? That’s Francesca de Rimini, murdered by her husband in the 13th century for having an affair with his brother, who Dante shows residing in the second circle of hell for the lustful. Unknown/Nth would be a devastating breakup song in any context, but Hozier gives it an overpowering weight by placing it in the ninth circle, for treachery, and addressing a former lover who has pieces of his heart still stuck in their teeth.
