In the six years since NYC singer/songwriter Julie Byrne released her sophomore album Not Even Happiness, a lot has happened in the world. Her breakthrough was met with much critical acclaim in indie spheres, and she went on to tour the record for two years. Then, at the dawn of COVID, she retreated back into her own community to write and start building her next project with her collaborators Eric Littmann, Jake Falby and Marilu Donovan. When I received word this spring that her third LP, The Greater Wings, was on the horizon—that Byrne was returning to us with a new chapter of intimacy and mysticism that would, surely, change the chemical makeup of our very souls once more—I found myself reintroduced to her work in a way that felt like a warm hello.
I discovered Byrne’s work sometime while I was in college, when her song “Natural Blue” appeared on a playlist someplace. I grew to love Not Even Happiness five years ago, and I still believe that that project carries a certain heaviness in my cells. Though I’m older now and in a new city and have loved and felt a deep resonance for so many artists since finding Byrne, I never fell out of orbit with her music; it was just too powerful to ever lose sight of. A track like “Follow My Voice” is particularly magnetizing, especially in how she exudes these airy, haunting vocals atop a beautiful guitar strum that is so organic you can hear the strings creak as she moves her fingers across the frets. “I’ve got a complicated soul,” she lamented. I always thought, maybe in my own naive understanding of composition and my own inability to play an instrument myself, that Byrne was classically trained on the guitar. She’s not, she tells me. “I’m self-taught and have many mischievous habits to prove it,” she laughs.
But Not Even Happiness was a guitar record, and one of the very best you’ll hear. Pulling from loving reference points in a century’s worth of folk music with delicate energy, Byrne’s dedication to her instrument has always been at the forefront of her work. Her father grew up playing the guitar, too, and it was an important fixture in his family life growing up. In the years since he passed that affection down to Byrne, she has fallen in love with the inexhaustible potential that her own guitar holds for her. “The guitar is really in my blood,” she notes. “It’s a living, breathing instrument and there’s nothing that will eclipse it for me. I feel like the guitar can still save my life again and again. There’s nothing like playing that instrument and feeling it. There’s such a synergy in playing, I can feel it in my body.”
The Greater Wings builds on that dedication to guitar-playing while also incorporating gorgeous teardrop synths and string arrangements. It’s a dense, beautiful evolution that arises in subtle ways, like her steady, gentle plucking on “Flare,” or the subdued, widened melody of the title track. Where the urge to pair front-facing strums with her buoyed, elegiac lyricism was greater on Not Even Happiness, Byrne puts a passionate trust in the limitlessness of her own soundscapes. The work is cosmic, yes, but even the most astral moments are down-to-earth, as if they exist within a curious, grasping reach.
There is, unfortunately, a damning sense of impatience that has overcome modern music consumption in the age of streaming. Of course, Byrne did not face scrutiny like Frank Ocean or Sky Ferreira have, but there is, undoubtedly, ample pressure on any artist to continue producing at intervals that are periodical enough to keep listeners excited. And, because Byrne maintains a relatively low profile online, the gap in her catalog makes The Greater Wings feel much more like a comeback album—even though she’s been performing and writing and creating at a consistent clip since Not Even Happiness. Instead of cultivating a public voice outside of songwriting, she puts a focus on her day-to-day relationships. It makes the work she does share with us more rewarding, as she arrives out of (seemingly) thin air with this angelic, breathtaking music. And what Byrne brings to us on The Greater Wings is, quite possibly, one of the heaviest and most thoughtful records of 2023—not just because of Bryne’s artistic singularity, but because of her attention to partnership and symbiosis and generosity.
“It’s been enlivening to have this emergence after such a life-changing era,” she says. “I feel like I’m finding a way to speak more publicly, in a way that feels natural and sincere for me, which was something that, perhaps, I was less in touch with—or less capable of—in the past. I would say that having a deep network of relationships is just as much a part of my creative process. And the way that I live, it’s just as much a part of where the inspiration to write and the substance from writing comes from. I experience a deep sense of purpose in my close relationships, and it’s infinitely connected to the motivation to share my experience.”
She mentions a YouTube compilation of Lady Gaga, which a friend showed her some time ago. In the video, Gaga says, over and over again, that “all you need is one person to believe in you.” While the pop icon’s philosophy is fair and valid, it does sit perpendicular to The Greater Wings and Byrne’s musicianship altogether—which sparkles and survives through communion and mutual aid. “I think [Gaga is] such a wise person and it can’t be said enough. But, I would say that support in meaningful relationships is part of the supply of courage that it takes to share your truth, vividly and vulnerably,” she adds.
When Byrne made Not Even Happiness, she was also working as a park ranger in New York, which helped spur her into a place where she was writing empathetic, considerate pastorals about nature after spending so much intimate time immersed within it. The talismanic, guiding force on The Greater Wings was much harder to pin down, however, lending itself to different bodies and events and spirits. “In the beginning, I feel like the only thing that was stronger than my doubt was my determination to continue writing and to learn how to write as a working artist for the first time,” she says. “I have to name Eric as providing the most enduring support and really holding my confidence, especially in the beginning when I, at times, hardly had any.”
Littmann, who was Byrne’s dearest musical partner and soulmate, had a steadfast belief in what they could make together—knowing that it was critical and vital work and worth pursuing through whatever shape it was destined to take. Together, they laid together the groundwork for what became a multi-year process. “[The Greater Wings] is guided by curiosity and intuition and mysticism and preserving the moments between us that then became lyrics for so many of these songs. And then, when Eric died, the guiding force was memorial. It became one of many paths of recovery, which I’m still in the process of.”
In early 2021, Littmann died suddenly at the age of 31 and halted Byrne’s work on the album completely. His passing has become a point of focus in the build-up to The Greater Wings, which is not unfamiliar territory for an album that is so deftly centered around grief and the different vessels such a headspace can take. But what must be said is that The Greater Wings exists the way it does because of the brilliance and care that Littmann put into it alongside Byrne while he was alive. The energy of memorial surrounding the beauty of his time spent here with us adds even more depth to Byrne’s songwriting—which is deeply packed in a language that is as meticulous and clear-eyed as it is accessible to anyone who has been enraptured by a similar degree of ache.
And in turn, many of the lyrics—including the lines “I get so nostalgic for you, sometimes” in “Portrait Of A Clear Day” and “Blue dawn of night go on, I’ve been missing you with my whole life” in “Death Is The Diamond”—carry different connotations in retrospect, but what makes Byrne such an important figure in our lifetime is that these emblems of mourning and recollection can so easily be about a bygone lover, a friend who’s passed on or an insurmountable, uncategorical mountain of loss. In that way, the songs she writes are timeless treasures. The Greater Wings does not aim to settle the score on any type of trauma. Byrne approaches pain on a molecular, curious level, as she attempts to better understand the sorrow, not conquer it. With deep bonds, that is a nature of healing that is so often emphasized in poetics but forgotten in conceptual music. You don’t get through heartbreak, you learn to live with its wounds and allow them to change and transform as days pass. By The Greater Wings’ end, the hole in Byrne’s heart is not patched shut; it’s blurred as a means of enduring.
Byrne began working on The Greater Wings in Chicago in late 2020. She would crash on Littmann’s couch in his studio and sublet her place in Los Angeles to save money. While she spent days writing, Littmann worked as a bioinformatician and managed a lab at the University of Chicago that specialized in infectious disease (mainly cancer) research. They’d record together at night and on the weekends all winter, and much of the album found its thematic shape while Byrne took long walks along the edge of Lake Michigan that was just a stone’s throw from Littmann’s home. In their time spent together across Byrne’s catalog, the two musicians never worked in a conventional recording studio space.
For The Greater Wings, Littmann would rig up a portable recording setup out of a suitcase—a mentality that he preserved from his come-up as a bedroom producer in the 2010s. “He was very, very innovative in the way that he approached his work and his vision,” Byrne says. “He was highly adaptable. He didn’t believe that you needed expensive gear or any formal training to approach recording and writing songs.” When the two were making Not Even Happiness, Littmann spent countless hours digging around on forums in order to figure out the right microphone configuration that would do total justice to the fullness of Byrne’s sound. “It was part of his ethos of what it meant to be ‘forever underground,’” she adds.
Forever Underground is the name of a 2020 album from Littmann’s collective called Phantom Posse. In Byrne’s Instagram bio, she has “forever underground” beneath her name. “You’re always in the band, Forever Underground,” she vocalizes on the title track. “Name my grief to let it sing, to carry you up on the greater wings.” The Phantom Posse motto quickly became a proverb in Byrne and Littmann’s friend group, but it’s been lovingly embraced by everyone who has encountered it. Just two words, it conveys so much meaning to the people who were in a close proximity to the man who coined it; but, beautifully, it carries hope and resilience to anyone who needs it in perpetuity.
In the spring of 2021, Littmann and Byrne drove to New York to record Donovan’s harp pieces in her living room. It was there that she composed her standalone string odyssey “Summer’s End,” which is this breathtaking, three-minute ambient movement. Then, while house-sitting for a friend in Los Angeles, Falby’s distinctive violin, bowed guitar, piano and synthesizer work gave the album the soundscape layering it needed. You can hear him most emphatically on “Hope’s Return” and closing track “Death Is The Diamond.” But it was soon after recording Falby’s parts that Littmann passed. As Byrne puts it, “everything stopped for a while.” It wasn’t until months after Littmann’s passing that she returned to recording. With the help of Alex Somers, Byrne found herself able to revisit the songs he and Littmann made together, and she maintains that, without Somers, The Greater Wings might not have been completed when it was.
“As I was in the throes of trying to figure out how to finish the record, Ghostly [International] connected us and Alex and I met and had our first trial session, in which he offered so much warmth and sensitivity to what I was going through—because, in order for us to see if we could work well together, we needed to open the songs for the first time since Eric’s death. Alex was with me when I returned to our work for the first time. It wasn’t only Alex’s beauty as a producer and a musician himself, it was also his softness and his grace to be able to just meet me where I was in that time of my life. His sensitivity was deep. It wasn’t just his words, it was actions. And I feel really grateful for our collaboration,” Byrne says.
The themes of grief and rebuilding are forward and immense on The Greater Wings. Much of the project was inspired by life on the road, particularly when Byrne and her band traveled across the world for two years performing the songs from Not Even Happiness and her 2014 debut Rooms With Walls and Windows. “Touring and being stretched thin is a lifestyle of being with the world and living alongside people,” Byrne says. “Privacy becomes a short walk and, sometimes, that’s it. It’s wildly social and collective, and it’s that way night after night after night.” After such a rigorous, exhausting itinerary, COVID hit—a mirrored, yet wildly different, set of circumstances around isolation that Byrne, like all of us, had to reconfigure her life around—especially being a creative person whose work is so deeply interwoven within the ecosystem of interpersonal solidarity.
“Learning how to cultivate a relationship with my home that feels alive and familiar and intimate is still something that I’m learning, after many more transient years in the past. What I was experiencing during much of the pandemic, that level of isolation can become life-threatening—and it was for many people. I can both relate and empathize with that. I think the antidote is remembering that we don’t have to do it alone. The antidote is, so much, meaningful relationships and nurturing that. And, sometimes, it’s learning how to receive and ask for support. It’s a hard thing to do,” she adds.
While parsing through grief, Byrne can’t help but careen directly into romance, fluttering hearts and joy. On “Moonless,” which she penned while taking part in an artist’s residency in Portugal, she sings of transitory desire and the euphoria of discovering meaning in how we might begin to fit perfectly in the niches of another person’s existence. “The night at the old hotel, I’d been learning you by heart,” she bemoans. “Voices rising through the smoke, tables caving in. I found it there in the room with you, whatever eternity is.” On “Lightning Comes Up From The Ground,” she daydreams of requited love: “That look is the most vivid image I have of you. The voices in my blood alive with longing, I tell you now what, for so long, I did not say. If I have no right to want you, I want you anyway.” On “Conversation Is A Flowerstate,” she illustrates how a lover’s touch became medicine to heartbreak and healing: “Maybe it was flawed logic, or maybe I was burning too hot and alive.”
As it stands, The Greater Wings is a masterpiece that weaves a palette of moods into an intricate tapestry. Not Even Happiness was a masterpiece of similar proportions, too. That word doesn’t have a quota, and I think we are all beyond lucky that Byrne has stuck around with us long enough to make not one, but two, of them. The success of her sophomore breakthrough was not an expected pouring in of warmth, but the embrace of The Greater Wings is far from a surprise—though Byrne isn’t really considering any of that these days. “I think, for me, becoming overly focused on reception only takes me out of myself,” she says. “And, sometimes, it can take a while to return to some kind of center. There’s a real danger in that. What grounds me now in my practice as a writer is making work that feels good in my body and my heart and soul. I’m in a place now where I just want to maintain a focus on creating work, that I am releasing work only when I can stand by it—staying free and curious with creativity.”
But yet, from the moment she released “Summer Glass,” one of the most glittering haunts in recent memory, it was clear that the world Byrne was building this time around was mosaic, heavy and unrelenting. “For now, I want to go further in, into moment, into vision, into you,” she sings. “I swore I’d show myself so I could renew. That’s not the same as being new forever. The shape of your hand left in the dust of summer glass, I want to be whole enough to risk again.” That final echo is the thesis of The Greater Wings. This album, at its spiritual, stellular, intimate core, is an anchor—one that beckons the sunrise to, finally, befall upon Byrne’s gaze once again.
Underneath the title Forever Underground on the Phantom Posse Bandcamp page, there is one bracketed message: [where we belong]. I think back to a line in “Summer Glass,” when Byrne sings, with her vocals slightly coiled up an octave: “Watched the light turning gold, our limbs a sequence of shadows. You are the family that I chose.” Rather than throwing us into the deep end of her grief and letting us figure out how to float on our own, Byrne is making the plunge, too. She understands the riches and humanity of leaning on somebody else. It was something that Littmann emphasized in his own work beyond Byrne’s, and it’s something she’s now practicing, too, to strengthen the musical habitat he created with the Phantom Posse Collective.
Byrne took “Love’s Refrain,” her 2020 collaboration with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma (who also provides the impeccable synth work on “Flare”), and fashioned it into “Hope’s Return.” While the former was a rumination on retrospective longing, the latter’s refrain was spun into a nexus of closure and optimism. The final line harkens back to Byrne’s days spent on the coast of Lake Michigan while Littmann was at work: “I need walks long enough to free me from my mind, a sense of horizon.”
The Greater Wings was not approached in any conceptual way, but it is now bound together by a community of tremendous, wonderful people—all of whom offered individual contributions that helped finish the work started by two people who loved each other beyond a tracklist’s timeline. Byrne lived through her parts, within the continuity of life. “So many questions were unanswered on Not Even Happiness, and I was younger then. So much has become clear in that time, but it’s only been through the honest effort that is to live through all of it and be here now,” she says, as her voice falls into a quick, but fleeting, click of laughter. Perhaps there are new questions left to unspool in the vibrant, doling momentum of The Greater Wings, but Byrne knows she won’t have to answer them alone.
Watch Julie Byrne’s 2017 Paste studio session here.
Matt Mitchell is Paste‘s assistant music editor. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, but you can find him online @yogurttowne.