5 stars!!! Irish singer songwriter Hozier proves the importance of music as a vessel for hope, while continuing to stun Melbourne audiences with his otherworldly vocals and astonishing tallness.

His first Melbourne concert for the Unreal Unearth tour came just under a week after the US election. Despite stepping into an environment tinged with hopelessness, Hozier managed to create space for joy, gentle despair, and communal resistance in his hour and a half set. As we enter a time of increasing political disillusionment and confusion, he established the importance of music as a catalyst of hope and a space for much-needed reprieve.

If you, like me, are more of a casual Hozier fan, then you might, like me, also have more of a vague cultural idea of him than a solid grasp on the nature of his discography. Before seeing him perform, I thought of him as a kind of 6’6” elfen, gentle acoustic guitar around a fireplace, mystical tree worshipper. A man that would appear to you in the forest, maybe. I knew him from ‘Too Sweet’; ‘Take Me To Church,’ and ‘Would That I,’ a beautiful song that women on TikTok use to celebrate the beauty and joy of womanhood. They dance in long dresses in long grass, they have dinner parties with their friends. It’s lovely, and naive, and softly resistant; claiming the love and the joy of womanhood in an ever-threatening world.

Opening artist Joy Oladokun kept the soft-spoken folk dream alive. They played slow and thoughtful queer love and heartbreak songs. Like Hozier’s complex and multi-layered lyrics, it felt like music that came from a long time looking at the world and trying to understand it.

When Hozier stepped out, there was a collective intake of breath. The crowd seemed ready to be taken away, and we were. His voice soared over the high sweetness of ‘De Selby (Part 1),’ an uplifting folk masterpiece. We were ready to be enchanted, and we were. However, as the band slid effortlessly into the bass riff opening of ‘De Selby (Part 2)’, it was evident that there was more to Hozier than I had given him credit for.

From ‘De Selby (Part 2)’ to the iconic and playful ‘Jackie & Wilson’ to the intensity of ‘Nobody’s Soldier,’ and ‘Eat Your Young’, the music was much more rock’n’roll, and much more fun than I had anticipated. Rather than just writing music about a man weeping his way into the damp soil, the beats and lyrics of many of Hozier’s performance songs felt grounded in a consciousness of the world in the present moment. ‘Nobody’s Soldier’ opens with “Living the dream, benzos and gasoline / Coffee and blue light screens till the morning” and in the pre-chorus, the indelibly relevant entreatment to “Let me look a little older”. Like the viral phenomenon ‘Too Sweet,’ which came later, ‘Nobody’s Soldier’ disguises the grim cynicism of its lyrics with a driving beat and a catchy melody. The band played a sequence of rock bangers, all illustrating an astute cultural conscience that carried through every tightly-rehearsed, perfectly performed song. Every note was perfect, every harmony transcendently beautiful. The crowd danced and jumped and swayed through the first half.

In the second half, there was a conscious slowing down, culminating in the Greek-mythology inspired ‘I, Carrion (Icarian)’. The song is about the bittersweet beauty of falling, the thrill before landing. It’s guitar-lead, soft and gentle. People hugged their friends, let tears roll down their faces, let themselves be touched by the gentleness of the melody. It’s beautiful to see, when something that is usually felt by someone alone, in their bedroom or their headphones, is written on their face in a stadium full of people feeling the same. It’s beautiful when something so intensely personal becomes shared.

It takes a lot of trust to pay to see a live performance. Especially Hozier, whose fans are often young women with no money, and whose tickets, as befitting such a big artist, are expensive. Buying that ticket, you have to believe that one night of music is worth the hundreds of dollars you’ve spent, the many hours of minimum-wage you worked for it, the potential hours of train travel, car travel, money spent on a perfect outfit or a secret bottle of whiskey hidden from parents and security. There’s so much that can go wrong. There’s so much that can go right.

Within minutes of Hozier taking the stage, it was clear that his performance would be perfect. His vocals were flawless, his instrumentation and musicality only enriched by live performance, every member of his band stupidly talented. As soon as I heard the opening drum beat and guitar riff of ‘Would That I,’ I felt sure that I had been right to trust him. The song’s chorus has a joyful call and response, which, thanks to its virality, every single person in the crowd knew. We had danced, and cried, and now, we were being lifted up. The open stadium let in the soft petrichor smell of newly falling rain, and more than 10,000 people, with shocking attention to holding the melody, sang together. It was beautiful, and made even more beautiful by the cliche of its beauty. How many times have we been told about the power of music? Let me tell you one more time. It’s real!!!

The penultimate song of the Unreal Unearth setlist is ‘Nina Cried Power’. Inspired by the US Civil Rights Movement of the 20th Century and originally recorded with the powerhouse vocals of Mavis Staples, the song is a powerful call to action, asserting that “It’s not the wakin’, it’s the risin’”. Over the extended intro, Hozier talked about the importance of political action on a daily, interpersonal level, as well as the importance of collectivised political action. Without directly referencing the fresh wound of the election, he talked about the threat to women’s reproductive rights in the US, threats to queerness and to trans rights across the world, draping a Transgender and Progress Pride flag across his mic stand. Referencing the Irish independence movement, he called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. There were keffiyehs dotted through the crowd, proudly worn over concert outfits.

For me, Hozier’s entire performance perfectly illustrated the intersection of culture and politics, and the place of culture in times of political upheaval. Even opening with ‘De Selby (Part 1)’, a song that includes both English and Gaelic lyrics, illustrates the significance of the political stance he took through the entire concert. The continued existence of the Irish Gaelic language is a testament to the ongoing resistance of Irish people against the British colony. Hozier created a space that was resistant both in intention and through offering a  reprieve from the confrontation of the horror of the world right now. He gave the audience the opportunity to hope that the world could be better, by showing how beautiful it can be. Hope is resistance, and that is what we were given. That’s what music can do. That’s what it did and will continue to do. Thank you Hozier, you beautiful Irish giant. Five stars.