Thursday 2th July 2015, Olympia Theâtre, Paris
Well, I can’t say he’s the arrogant type. Actually, out of all the words of the whole of the English language, arrogant would be the least appropriate to describe him. I would say he’s more of a… warm person. Yes, that whole experience was overall warm. (that sounded much less weird in my head)
The whole warm thing was on multiple different levels:
1) His personality. Imagine a cupcake, strawberry and vanilla, with more cream icing than it would be safe to put on there, extra sprinkles and a glass of fresh milk: that’s Hozier. Wait, no, sorry; make that cupcake irish.
He is just the sweetest person ever. I can’t count how many times he thanked the audience, his band, his friends, his managers… He even managed to personally thank, out loud, every single person that was on his tour.
2) His music and his band. It all was totally put together and seamless in a really rough way – I’m not sure that makes sense – but it was so natural and just… out there. I couldn’t have enjoyed anything more than those few songs he and his great band (Keyboard, two backing singers, bass, drummer).
3) The atmosphere the crowd and the venue. Half of the audience was a bunch of old prunes sucking the extremely hot air out of the place with their profoundly annoying disapproving glances and grimaces. The second half, on the other hand, was a gang of enthusiastic music lovers, most of them probably irish or english (a series of boisterous cheers at every moment Hozier mentioned where he comes from can vouch for that).
4) The heat (approximatively 45 degrees in that room). Attending a Hozier concert in a boiler would probably have been less hot. Oh well, it was a very, very nice alternative to a heating appliance.
All in all (and on a more serious note) it was a wonderful and intimate experience, where an artist honestly exposed his pure and soulful music to an audience, proudly flaunting his emotions and thoughts to the world. Isn’t that what music is about after all?
