The Daily Spin, November 20
Hozier | Wasteland, Baby!
Ooops! Late Night Post. My bad.
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: Wasteland, Baby! (2019)
Artist: Hozier
Link:
This is an album with a weird place in my head and my heart - it’s hard to compare it to Hozier’s fantastic debut album, almost an impossibility to hold it to that light so bright, but I’m not in the camp that many reviewers and aggregators were upon its release. Pitchfork gave it a 4.8, calling it the sort of music that essentially feels like ‘Take Me To Church’ rehashed 14 times in a row.
I can’t disagree more.
Here’s the thing - this is not Hozier’s best album. Even after Unreal Unearth, I would argue this is his weakest record - but that doesn’t make it bad. So many of his characteristic traits remain present in this one, the vocals that are syrupy without being saccharine, the instrumentation that calls to mind every pop-rock star of the past, oh, twenty years.
It’s a plain album. That’s the thing. This is 14 tracks of standard rock, the likes of which have often been pretty commercially successful but leave a fair bit to be desired in terms of musical diversity - and that’s how I feel about this one. You think this is going to be such a statement, with an opener like ‘Mavis Cried Power’ - and it does feel that way, for about thirty seconds, but as the album grows, you realize that Hozier’s sophomore record misses that.
This is most apparent in the hooks - because this is what Hozier’s music thrives on. If you can’t create a strong hook, then there’s little to be done for you, and this album is weak because of it - little draws me in the same way that his self-titled or his most recent does, and though there are tantalizing moments, it rarely pulls through to completion.
Rating: 8.3/10
Best Tracks: As It Was; Shrike; Dinner & Diatribes
Worst Tracks: To Noise Making