Hozier spoke at length only a couple of times this week at the opening of his three-day appearance at the Kia Forum in LA, but when he did, he chose some interesting topics. At the launch of “Wildflower and Barley,” he spoke about beekeeping, a hobby he started while living alone in the countryside in Ireland, and the impact he observed of the smallest changes on the instinct to roam in a difficult climate and at high altitude.

And later, during the encores, as his band played the instrumental intro to “Nina Cried Power” for six or seven minutes, he talked about the impact of small changes in human behavior on cultural change, drawing connections between the grassroots of women’s suffrage, the American civil rights movement, the rights of the LGBTQ community and the need for a negotiated peace in Gaza.

Somewhere between those two speeches, it occurred to me that Hozier is the best young mainstream rock star we have right now. Not because he urged his fans to contact their legislators or the bees, although those things couldn’t hurt.

Many music fans probably don’t even consider Hozier a “rock star” per se, perhaps because they think he’s too good for that role. The Irish singer-songwriter has a perceived virtue and an actual virtuosity, either of which might be disqualifying by some aggro standards. Having built this reputation as a brilliant, suave and generally admirable character, it was kind of weird that it took him recording such an atypical single as “Too Sweet” to finally score his first No. 1 hit in the U.S…. probably the first song he ever wrote specifically from a villain’s point of view. Turns out he’s not so serious that he can’t have fun. Role playing to be an unreliable person.

Mind you, Hozier Is a monster, but only musically. In his two-hour-plus Forum opener, marking out his own distinctive territory, he seemed about equal parts Joni Mitchell, Fairport Convention, Clannad and the Black Keys, claiming the best parts of the folk-rock conventions of the past 60 years, but also a bluesy-tinged sharpness and big power chords amid the complicated moods, time changes and masterful fingerpicking. It felt deeply sophisticated in the best sense, and also like arena rock – which is also a compliment, if only this once.

Having now been touring the world for a year and a half in support of his third album, last year’s Unreal Unearth, his show is incredibly well-rounded. It started with “De Selby (Part 1)”, a fairly ethereal song rooted in an obscure piece of fantastical European literature, with the English eventually giving way to Irish lyrics subtitled on the large screens either side of the stage before going fully churchy and choral. Maybe nothing on this list sounds like your idea of ​​a fun Saturday night, but the showstopper of this intro was (you guessed it) “De Selby (Part 2)”, which delivered in terms of harder rock music. It wasn’t long before Hozier was deep into his freshly released EP of outtakes with “Nobody’s Soldier,” a deeply hazy rock song that sounds like something out of a rock-and-soul revue overlaid with the sounds of a decelerating jet engine.

“Are you still feeling OK? I’ll do my best to change that, I swear to God,” he promised, around the time “Eat Your Young” was replaced by “Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene.” (How none of those tracks gave Hozier his first No. 1 hit in the U.S. is a mystery.) Hozier’s themes can be as sentimental in parts as promised; this is a guy who based his latest album around Dante’s circles of hell and who saves a stripped-down song about domestic violence (“Cherry Wine”) for the first B-stage encore. But getting truly depressed is an empty threat when more celebratory numbers like the hand-clapping, soul-music-celebrating “Almost (Sweet Music)” are there to lighten the mood.

Despite releasing just three full-length albums in his decade-long career, Hozier is already extremely rich in potential concerts, so much so that he’s already jettisoned some pretty fantastic songs from Unreal Unearth that were included in last year’s shows (like “Damage Gets Done” and “Astract (Psychopomp)”) to make room for three newer songs from the two EPs he’ll release in 2024. “Too Sweet” is, of course, the star of that—one of many songs in the set that show how much he loves a good bottom end, with bass and guitar melding into a slightly nasty instrument beneath that undeniable pop hook. But seeing him bring opening act Allison Russell onstage to coo along with him on the pop-folk “Wildflower and Barley” from the same EP, you’d never guess he’d go above Cat Stevens’ level of grit.

Highlights included “Eat Your Young,” a real banger – despite the Jonathan Swiftie title – with some tremolo guitar riffs that give an idea of ​​what a strong electric guitar soloist Hozier could be if he took his time; “Dinner and Diatribes,” a furious song with a guitar riff so intricate you’d think it was one of his songs with its odd time signature, even though it’s in pure ¾ time; “Francesca,” which gets much simpler with an anthemic chorus where the drummer hammers on quarter notes; and “It Will Come Back,” which saw the star pull out a resonator guitar to play something as close to gutbucket blues as possible.

Whether he’s playing acoustic or electric, fans can always be grateful for the large screens next to the stage (vertical ones, perhaps as a distraction from the TikTok generation) that offer hands-on glimpses of his phenomenally precise fingerwork. This provides an opportunity to better appreciate the odd, signature picking style that sees him constantly keeping the index finger of his right hand in the air and above the fray, which is as useless to him as a vestigial tail.

Singer Bedouine was his guest on all three nights at the Forum, coming to sing her duet on the new EP “That You Are.” But most of 2024 was a chance for Hozier to celebrate his opening act, Allison Russell, who was responsible for the strongest ongoing double bill of the year with him. In addition to “Wildflower and Barley,” he brings Russell back onstage for the closing encore, “Work Song,” describing her to the audience as “one of the greatest freedom singers of our time … and a very bright light in this world and a very bright light in my life.” He’s known for highlighting Mavis Staples by name and, of course, singing along on the recorded version of “Nina Cried Power” (a song that now gives backing singer Melissa McMillan a stage in concert) … and in his ongoing endorsement of Russell, Hozier clearly knows a Mavis successor when he hears one.

On Tuesday’s Forum show, Hozier mentioned that Russell’s casting in “Hadestown” on Broadway, which opens next month, had just been announced that day. Russell took the opportunity to reinstate a song called “Persephone” in her program — a song that happens to be named after her first girlfriend, although the “Hadestown” character of that name she will play in New York has few things in common with the young love she attributes her life to.

Russell’s 40-minute set was well received by the Forum crowd, and her music has many parallels to Hozier’s own, which helped make her a natural fit even before their shared philanthropic interests. The Grammy-winning “Eve Was Black” was even more rock’n’roll than Americana in this concert setting, and “Demons,” another song from her “The Returner” album, got funkier and throatier. “Superlover,” a song from her previous pre-solo performance, Birds of Chicago, had new lyrics that invoked Israel, Palestine and her current adopted home of Tennessee.

Russell was also promoting National Suicide Prevention Month when she announced the “Hadestown” news: “If you had told me when I was 14 or 15 years old and sleeping on park benches or in the … because I was safer in the cemetery than in the home of my adoptive family who called themselves my family but brutally harmed me for over a decade … when I didn’t believe I would live to be 18 … that I would be on Broadway right now, if you had told me that life could be this beautiful, I wouldn’t have believed you. If it can get better for me, it can get better for anyone.”

Another thing Hozier and Russell have in common is an almost pathological (in a good way) devotion to seemingly calling every crew and band member by name at the end of a set. In Hozier’s case, that extends to the production assistant, house engineer, guitar tech and carpenters. Whatever your mum told you about waiting for someone to treat “the help” well… maybe that should apply to our rock stars too.