The first album in over six years from American songwriter Julie Byrne is a testament to patience and determination, the willingness to transform through the desolation of loss, the vitality of renewal, and the courage to rise, forever changed. For nearly a decade, Byrne has moved through the world as a characteristically private artist largely outside the public eye. A self-taught musician that has committed her life to her work, she now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous, and life-affirming music of her career, The Greater Wings. While they hold the plasticity of grief and trauma, the songs are universally resonant, unbridled in their devotion and joy, held up by the love and alliance of a chosen family. Byrne leans further into atmospheres both expansive and intimate; the lush, evocative songcraft flows between her signature fingerpicked guitar, synthesizer, and a newly adopted piano, made wider by flourishes of harp and strings. It is the transcendent sound of resource, of friendship that was never without romance, of loyalty that burns from within like a heart on fire, and the life force summoned in unrepeatable moments — raw, gorgeous, and wild.

The Greater Wings was written across several seasons, pulling imagery from nights on tour, periods of isolation, and the drives cross-country for its various collaborations between Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Recording started with the late Eric Littmann, her longtime creative partner and Not Even Happiness producer, and finished in the Catskills of New York with producer Alex Somers (Sigur Rós, Julianna Barwick).

“My hope for The Greater Wings is that it lives as a love letter to my chosen family and as an expression of the depth of my commitment to our shared future. Being reshaped by grief also has me more aware of what death does not take from me. I commit that to heart, to words, to sound. Music is not bound to any kind of linear time, so in the capacity to record and speak to the future: this is what it felt like to me, when we were simultaneous, alive, occurring all at once. What it has felt like to go up against my edge and push, the love that has made it worth all this fight. These memories are my values, they belong with me.”

Julie Byrne will confess the success of her 2017 LP Not Even Happiness was unexpected; nine gracefully road-worn odes to the fringes of life she assembled without any expectation that they’d travel so far beyond their DIY origins. But its hushed closing track, “I Live Now As A Singer,” did forecast an intention. She knew the open space — occupied by Littmann’s signature palette of synth tones, Jake Falby’s strings, and Byrne’s robust, drifting voice — presented something new and thrilling, something they’d develop as a live band touring the world, and what would later be understood as the catalyst for material to come. From orchestral folk meditations (“The Greater Wings”, “Portrait of a Clear Day”) to windswept piano ballads (“Moonless”, “Death Is The Diamond”) to the luminous, synth-driven euphoria of “Summer Glass,” The Greater Wings builds on this revelatory space at every turn.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Following on from her standout 2017 LP 'Not Even Happiness', 'The Greater Wings' is a sweeping, expansive and meditative record that passes through wistful orchestral folk, heartfelt piano balladry and iridescent synth passages - gorgeous, gorgeous stuff!!

TRACK LISTING

1. The Greater Wings
2. Portrait Of A Clear Day
3. Moonless
4. Summer Glass
5. Summer’s End
6. Lightning Comes Up From The Ground
7. Flare
8. Conversation Is A Flowstate
9. Hope’s Return
10. Death Is The Diamond

Sometimes it can take years to find your calling. Not so, for wanderer Julie Byrne; whose power of lyrical expression and melodic nous seems inborn. But often, what comes naturally demonstrates against speed. Julie’s second album Not Even Happiness has taken time to evolve, but as it spans recollections of bustling roadside diners, the stars over the high desert, the aching weariness of change, the wildflowers on the coast of California and the irresolvable mysteries of love. Her new album archives a vivid world that would've otherwise been lost to the road and in doing so, Byrne exhibits her extraordinarily innate musicality.

In fact, some of the album’s songs took two years of fine tuning to get where they needed to be. And if you were to ask her why the follow up to 2014's Rooms With Walls And Windows has taken so long, you’d only be greeted with a bemused smile as though it's the strangest question she's ever been asked; “Writing comes from a natural process of change and growth. It took me up to this point to have the capacity to express my experience of the time in my life that these songs came from.”

Having counted Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, New Orleans as her home in recent years. For now, Julie has settled in New York City where she moonlights as a seasonal urban park ranger in Manhattan. Whether witnessing the Pacific Northwest for the first time (‘Melting Grid’), the morning sky in Colorado after staying up through the night at a house party in the mountains of Boulder (‘Natural Blue’), recording the passage of freight trains on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York ('Interlude'), or a journey fragrant with rose water; reading Frank O’Hara aloud from the passengers seat during a drive through the desert of Utah into the rainforest of Washington State (‘All The Land Glimmered Beneath’), Not Even Happiness is Julie’s beguilingly ode to the fringes of life.

Self-taught on the guitar after picking it up when her father became ill and could no longer play the instrument himself, Julie readily admits she can’t read music and doesn't even listen to it all that much - the first vinyl she owned was indeed, her own. Recorded with producer Eric Littmann (Phantom Posse), Julie laid down the new album in her childhood home in western New York state and offers an altogether bigger picture to its predecessor through a wider, yet subtle, exploration of instruments and atmospherics, Not Even Happiness reveals an artist who has grown in confidence over time.

Byrne's debut album was released back in January 2014 on Chicago based DIY label Orindal after initially being as two separate cassettes releases. Rooms With Walls and Windows went onto become a true modern-day word of mouth success story (it would have to be for an artist who shuns all forms of social media) and ended the year being voted number 7 in Mojo magazine's best albums of the year, with the Huffington Post calling it "2014's Great American Album". A collection of hushed intimate front porch psych-folk songs, that unknowingly recalled the greats, but felt very much for our time. It saw her travel to Europe over two summers playing the Green Man festival and End Of The Road, as well as lesser trodden tour paths around Europe.

Julie Byrne will take the songs from Not Even Happiness (the first release on a new record label Basin Rock, based in the Lancashire / Yorkshire border town of Todmorden) on the road throughout 2017.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Lightly strummed and impeccably arranged folk guitars meet with swaying and mournful vocals all purposefully and beautifully delivered as a shining example of minimal affectations with maximum results.

TRACK LISTING

1. Follow My Voice
2. Sleepwalker
3. Melting Grid
4. Natural Blue
5. Interlude
6. Morning Dove
7. All The Land Glimmered Beneath
8. Sea As It Glides
9. I Live Now As A Singer