Reception Radio: I, Carrion (Icarian), by Hozier
Icarus returns to earth, and Hozier returns to Icarus
It was only a matter of time before Hozier made another appearance on Reception Radio. Last time I covered this folkloric Irish singer-songwriter, I talked about how his track Sunlight engages with the myth of Icarus.
Icarus must be a favourite story of Hozier’s, because he returned to it in his latest album, 2023’s Unreal Unearth. The album focuses on the cycle of mortality, decomposition, and birth, so Icarus, with his unusual and poignant death story, fits right in.
The title implies that it could be sung from Icarus’ point of view. Singing an account of dying isn’t a first for Hozier: he’s written plenty of music from the perspectives of corpses, undead spirits, and entities caught in the between-spaces of the life cycle. Like many of Hozier’s songs, I, Carrion (Icarian) pairs some very specific mythological references with ambiguous poetic phrasing. Is this song from the perspective of Icarus? Or is it from a person or animal experiencing an Icarian fall, perhaps a bird fatally wounded in mid-air? I’ve seen Hozier fans online speculate that the fall is a metaphor for a breakup, or another event that has sent the singer into an emotional tailspin. The lyrics do contain some rather poignant lines about grief and loss.
The Unreal Unearth album is structured around Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy isn’t really a specialty of mine, so I’ll let others discuss how Hozier engages with this classic Italian Renaissance epic. I mention this partly because the modern reception of Dante is an interesting topic, partly because I think Dante would be pleased that Hozier drew inspiration both from him and from ancient mythology. The Divine Comedy is packed with figures from Greco-Roman antiquity, after all.
Here are the lyrics to I, Carrion (Icarian):
If the wind turns, if I hit a squall
Allow the ground to find its brutal way to me
I feel lighter than I have in so much time
I've crossed the border line of weightless
One deep breath out from the sky
I've reached a rarer height now that I can confirm
All our weight is just a burden offered to us by the world
And though I burn how could I fall?
When I am lifted by every word you say to me
If anything could fall at all, it's the world
That falls away from me
You have me floatin' like a feather on the sea
While you're as heavy as the world
That you hold your hands beneath
Once I had wondered what was holdin' up the ground
But I can see that all along, love, it was you all the way down
Leave it now, I am sky-bound
If you need to, darling, lean your weight to me
We'll float away, but if we fall
I only pray, don't fall away from me
I do not have wings, love, I never will
Soarin' over a world you are carryin'
If these heights should bring my fall
Let me be your own
Icarian carrion
If the wind turns, if I hit a squall
Allow the ground to find its brutal way to me
If I should fall, on that day
I only pray, don't fall away from me