Hozier continues his interesting, unusual combination of soul-gospel vocals with his fist-pumping, masculine pub dude rock sound and spirit with ‘Movement‘. A tribute to a lover, lyrically the song charts the experience of being emotionally moved by your partner in quite evocative and poetic ways. There is a beguiling range of dream-like allegory in this song recounting how his beloved moves him when she moves. From the Biblical Jonah and the whale to the dream-land evoking willow tree to dancer Fred Astaire, a lithe and elegant mover, ‘Movement’ tells its story in a sublime and mesmerising, albeit blokey way – not that there’s anything wrong with that. The song uses bouncing kick drums and hand claps rhythmically in much the same way that global monster hit, ‘Take Me To The Church‘ did its ubiquitous “hey! hos!”.

Which much like Coldplay, depending on how it hit your ear, was either gloriously catchy and inspiring or maddeningly irritating and trite, relying just a little bit too much on cliched songwriting trickery and not quite enough bona fide songwriting skill to get by. If you’re a manly heterosexual male or one imagines, the type of female who loves them, then this kind of four to the floor, manly dude pub rock vibe is definitely your bag. Hozier’s gospel-soul vocals are a definite high point of his music and his voice is undeniably beautiful, but it’s arguable whether this asset lifts his music out of the ordinary and into something remarkable. However, as with Coldplay again, his legions of fans would certainly argue the latter, so he must be doing something right.