Hozier is being buried alive. Dirt covers his face, scatters across his eyes, until only his mouth is visible, a daisy clenched between his bared teeth. To the average onlooker, it’s an alarming sight to behold. For those who know the Irish artist’s music, it’s par for the course. This is the cover art for his third album, Unreal Unearth. Photographer Julia Johnson told her followers it was one of the most “stressful shoots of her life”. But judging by his wide grin, Hozier was having a grand old time.
The musician born Andrew Hozier-Byrne can frequently be found communing with nature. To affectionate fans, he’s some kind of woodland sprite who sequesters himself in the Irish countryside – writing songs and occasionally sharing Instagram videos of himself marvelling at badger sets or rolling down hills – until it’s time to tour again. Yet Unreal Unearth is also shaped by the fears and anxieties of lockdown, during which it was largely composed. “It was funny, because in some ways I thought I’d spent enough time [on his favoured themes of life and mortality], and then we were thrown into these new conditions,” the softly spoken 33-year-old says. “So there was a lot of death hanging over me.”
