Hozier encouraged the audience to look out for their neighbors in the festival’s heat, then later asked everyone to extend neighborly compassion to struggling groups around the world, including the Middle East.
“I believe it’s so fucking simple,” Hozier said. “I believe that people are good, they have generous hearts. They would want to see human beings live in peace with safety and security.”
Andrew Hozier-Byrne delivered a near-holy folk-rock set on the T-Mobile stage at Austin City Limits Festival on Friday night. He presented an 18-track setlist over an hour and a half, in which he performed a thematically ranged show and grieved a struggling world without surrendering to it.
The Irish artist took the stage with his usual composed conviction, opening with “Nobody’s Soldier” off his latest 2023 album, Unreal Unearth. As he sang, screens displayed visuals of bullets, dollar signs and the word “liquidity,” a mix that foreshadowed the show’s running themes of inequality. A song about wanting to break the societal mold, Hozier matched the lyrics’ outrage with howling belts while pounding a tambourine on his chest.
“Choose between being a salesman or a soldier,” he sang. “Just let me look a little older / Let me step a little bolder.”
Reverberations from an echoing performance of “Jackie and Wilson” still in their air, Hozier then sang “Angel Of Small Death And The Codeine Scene” as if reciting hymns. Complementing the song, a shrieking guitar solo and a three-person choir made for a rock ascension.
Hozier’s bellowing screams in songs like “Francesca” stood out from gentle melodies like “Cherry Wine,” paired with only an acoustic guitar on his lap. This contrast encompasses the artist’s composed conviction that he demonstrated during a five-minute speech.
While introducing the second-to-last song, “Nina Cried Power,” Hozier said the track is a love letter to artists like Mavis Staples, who sang before speeches during the Civil Rights Movement with her band, The Staple Singers.
“The Civil Rights Movement that took place here in the 1960s, is something I would love for you to internalize and be very fucking proud of,” Hozier said.
He then said people often forget the privileges that allow for rights like free speech, workers’ rights, women’s reproductive rights and gay rights. Hozier added that for the past two years, he has been encouraging people in Austin to exercise all their rights to support peace, safety and security for everybody in the Middle East. Condemning both antisemitism and islamophobia, the artist called for a free Palestine, free of occupation and genocide.
Hozier ended the night with a booming performance of “Take Me to Church,” rounding off the festival’s first day with the legacy track, after which the crowd dispersed as fireworks blazed.
