The album I am going to be reviewing is Hozier by Hozier. This is a rhythm and blues album released in 2014. I have decided to review this album as it is one of my favourite albums in recent memory. It is also recorded very well and produced very well. Another reason I have chose this album is due to the fact that it was largely recorded in studios throughout Ireland.
The album was released by an Irish musician called Hozier. Hozier, real name Andrew Byrne, is the stage name of Andrew Byrne and not a full band. He comes from Bray, Wicklow. This is his 1st studio album following 2 EP's, Take Me To Church EP and From Eden EP. He himself credits his Rhythm and Blues sound to his parents and names artists such as Jackie Wilson, who he wrote the song Jackie and Wilson about, Nina Simone and other blues artists as his main inspirations.
Hozier is signed to Island Records and Rubyworks records. He has released both EP's and his the studio album Hozier with them. He has been nominated for several awards including Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards for Take Me To Church.
Producer Profile - Rob Kirwan
The album was produced by Hozier himself and an Irish Producer called Rob Kirwan. Hozier had tried to record his album with a number of different producers and record engineers he worked with Dublin based Rob Kirwan. He found Kirwan through listening to an record called Let England Shake by PJ Harvey.
Kirwan said that the recording process with Hozier was extremely easy with Hozier as he said Hozier created and produced most of the stuff himself. He stated, when quizzed about recording with Delorentos and Hozier, "Delorentos probably needed more hands-on work. I did a lot of arranging with them. With Hozier, I hardly did any."
Kirwan is a renowned Dublin based producer and is credited on numerous records such as "This is War" by 30 Seconds to Mars, "Bloodless Coup" by Bell X1 and "Beauty Becomes More Than Life" by The Frank and Walters. He is based mainly in Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin.
The Album - An Overall Look
The album overall has a very old school sound. It has an old school rhythm and blues sound. The overall album is very consistent. It is filled with songs all produced very similarly with a couple of variants i.e. Cherry Wine and Work Song. The album uses a lot of reverb to create a spacious sound with lots of air in the mixes.
Instrumentally, the album uses Guitar, Bass, Cello, Percussion, Keyboards and Vocals as a basis to work off and does not very much from these instrument for most tracks. The exception being cherry wine, which was recorded live with just a guitar and vocals and some ambient sound which are used to fill space in the mix.
One of the main effects used in Hozier is reverb. The album was largely recorded in the Cauldron Recording Studios in Dublin. This studio has a specialised reverb chamber. This studio is built majority from stone. It is specially designed to create a lot of reverb giving a very live sound to recordings. This is very evident on Hozier, the album.
The majority of the album is has a very Old School Blues sound apart from Cherry Wine and Work Song, which I will go into more detail of later. Cherry Wine is such a distinctive song because it is recorded live and is stripped back majorly from the level of instrumentation and production on the rest of the album. This is song was recorded in an abandoned La Touché Hotel in Greystones at 5am. The song was originally recorded on a camcorder and later the music was pulled off the video and edited. This means that the overall song has been edited together. This is very different from other tracks as its noticeable that at certain points there are birds chirping and other naturalistic elements prominent which is due to the live recording.
Overall I felt the album was arranged, produced and performed similarly which gives the album a feel of continuity and adds to the experience of the album.
Jackie And Wilson - More Rhythm than Blues?
I have decided to go in depth analysing 2 songs from this record. The artist Jackie Wilson was named as the main inspiration for this song. The 1st song is Jackie and Wilson. I have decided to analyze this track as it is a happier song than some other on the album. It maintains most of the characteristics I talked about in the precious section but has more prominence from certain i.e. effects and instrumentation. This is also a song that I am training myself to use as a reference track.
Instrumentation is one of the most noticeable pieces of any track so I will start there. In this track the most prominent instrument used is the guitar played by Hozier. The analysis of the frequency spectrum also backs this up. The guitar has a lot of low end on it which translates onto the image. The gain begins to drop more the further along the spectrum you look. The guitar is operating mostly in the mid frequencies here 500Hz - 2KHz. This shows its dominance in the track. There is also some animation used on the guitar in the verse pieces. From some of the strums the guitar gets panned heavy to the right and as the guitar is slid down before the chorus it is panned to the left gradually.
The vocals are also very prominent, i.e. Lead and Backing. It sounds to me that Hozier's main vox are double tracked and one is slightly delayed. This effect is used to increase the power and space the vox take up. The backing vox also operate in a lower register than the main vox. There is heavy use of reverb on the backing vox also.
The majority of this track is coming through the middle. This refers to the main guitar, bass, drum sound and piano. The double track of the vocals is panned slightly either side in the chorus. This creates the spacious effects used throughout the album. The backing harmonies in the chorus seem to come through slightly more on the right side of the track. They also have lots of animation in the bridge part of the song. This animation is mostly pan animation.
For the chorus the drums start to operate more full on and involve more cymbal hits. This, along with the higher vocals in the backing harmonies lead to a giant increase in gain in the higher end of the Hz spectrum for the choruses.
Work Song - The Gospel According To Hozier
The second track I decided to use was Work Song. I choose this track because I feel it is the best arranged track musically on the album. I also felt the this song uses numerous effects well has lots of use of different techniques. It also has the feel of a choir/ gospel track thanks to the harmonies used which I thought was very cool for an album in modern music.
The song is arranged with the main instrument being harmonies provided by the band and Hozier himself. The harmonies at the beginning of the track are made up entirely of Hozier layering his vocals over each other in different registers. This provides a representations of his ability. Most of the effects on this track seem to be from the recordings themselves. I feel these tracks are extremely dry when compared against the main vox. The harmonies then has female vocalists added to it when the chorus hits. These vocals have a delay effect added and are then killed with reverb. The track also seems to be panned through automation from hard left to hard right throughout the chorus. This is just on the female vocal parts. The main vocal line, Hozier himself, also uses a lot more reverb in the chorus break and in the chorus itself than in the verse. This would be partly down to automation used and also down to the double tracking.
This song also uses a lot of panned tracks. The main body of the song is made up of harmonies. These are recorded on separate tracks and layered down. I think each track is panned to the left and right respectively with the higher harmonies panned more to the right and with the lower harmonies to the left. The frequency picture also backs up this point with more happening in the higher end of the spectrum on the right ear than in the left.
The guitar is also split with the lower part of the guitar coming through more on the right with higher end to the left to balance out the vocal harmonies. This is most evident in the outro of the song.
To conclude, I feel that this is a very well put together album. The gear and personnel used is also extremely well planned out. For example, Hozier himself plays 4 different guitars on the album a Danelectro Resonator, a Takamine P3NY, Epiphone Broadway and a Fender Stratocaster.
The main piece of equipment I found was best used was the recording space they used. The main chunk of the album was recorded in The Cauldron Studios in Dublin. After listening to the album this seems like an album that was written with this studio in mind, it suits the album so perfectly.
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