De Selby (Part 2)

Hozier builds this track from the ground up like a cathedral being assembled in slow motion — bass-heavy and cavernous at the foundation, with guitar tones that have an almost geological patience to them. From his 2023 album *Unreal Unearth*, rooted in Dante's *Inferno*, the song carries that album's characteristic sense of mythological scale compressed into personal experience. The production is layered but never crowded, with dynamics that shift between intimate nearness and vast, reverberant space, as though the sonic environment is breathing. Hozier's voice — one of the most instrumentally deployed baritones in contemporary folk-rock — operates here in its middle register, conversational in moments and then suddenly enormous, the shift happening with a naturalness that makes it feel less like performance than weather. The song deals with being drawn toward something destructive or consuming despite full knowledge of its nature, which is the De Selby framework from Flann O'Brien — the idea of a philosophical system that leads deliberately toward oblivion. What it feels like, emotionally, is the specific surrender of someone who has decided to stop arguing with a desire they know will cost them. There's no self-pity in it, and no resolution. The blues-church undertow that characterizes much of Hozier's best work is present here, making the song feel ancient even though it's recent. You'd listen to this late at night, alone, when you're past the point of pretending you don't already know what you're going to do.