I tend to love 2 types of music (i) really beautiful music (ii) really un-beautiful music. I don’t play in the no-mans land between them and prefer the extremes of the beauty continuum. There is no doubt that Julie Byrne’s ‘The Greater Wings’ sits at the very beautiful end of the beautiful music spectrum.
I have for some time loved the niche, sub-sub-genres of ‘folk music that bleeds into ambience’ and also ‘ambience that bleeds into folk music.’ I would listen to pretty much anything that Grouper or Mutual Benefit recorded. Julie Byrne sits somewhere in this space and occupies a very special place in my heart and my ears for doing so. This is Julie’s 3rd album in a period of 9 years of releasing albums. She’s far from prolific and that’s ok with me. It’s been 6 years since the release of Not Even Happiness which I chose as Album of the Month and introduced you guys too. That album is my calm place. It’s a constant in my life. I ‘use’ that album as much as listen to it, by which I mean that it plays a role in my life more than music. God that sounds wanky but also, it’s true so fuck it.
You won’t get many words into a review for ‘The Greater Wings’ without learning that it was completed in heartbreaking circumstances. In June 2021, Eric Littmann, Bryne’s long time collaborator, friend and I believe former partner passed away. He was 31. Apparently Littmann was as responsible for the beauty of ‘Not even happiness’ as Byrne was, adding production and synth credits to the album. He’s untimely passing came half way through recording ‘On Greater Wings’. It feels like he was a major influence in the creation of the album but also that he influenced the nuance with which the album was completed after his passing.
I read a ‘throw-away’ Instagram post the other day that introduced me to the concept of ‘Glimmers’ and explain them as the opposite of triggers. Its the things that add beauty and peace into your world. The idea being that (as per triggers) the more you look for them, the more you find them. ‘The Greater Wings’ is 39 minutes of glimmers, glimmers born of the most heartbreaking circumstances.
I read about this album before I had the chance to listen to it. I knew the circumstances in which it was recorded and this probably set my initial expectations. But it’s perhaps not what you think it is. At least, not unless you want it to be. I think there are 2 ways to listen to this album. You can allow this album to infuse you with glimmers and with loveliness by allowing yourself to be caught up in its current. You can allow it to pull you along with it. Or, you can make a deliberate, conscious decision to immerse yourself in it. If you do the latter, it can be emotionally overwhelming, it could be the wrong time to listen to this album like this. I do however think that if you chose the first option, you are not missing out on the depth or the importance of this album. I am not suggesting you make it background music. I am not sure it could ever be that. It still radiates beauty and connection … and glimmers.
If you’re new to Julie Byrne, her music sits somewhere in that Indie / Folk space. She’s always experimented with Synths and ambience that adds something hauntingly affecting to her music. This album is this x10. It’s 39 minutes, 10 tracks. Every note, sound and feeling is where it is as a deliberate act of placement. Bryne talks about the track sequencing being the result of very specific thinking. She talks about the presentation of tracks being ‘the purest form’ of the music on this album. She also talks about Side A and Side B. If I am honest, I was not convinced that I thought the sequencing was ‘right’ when I first heard it. The title track is a stunning piece of music but I was not sure if it felt right to start the album. However, having lived with this album for weeks, I get it. I totally understand what she means.
One thing you won’t hear on this album is percussion. The closest you get is the percussive thrum of a finger picked guitar. On some tracks this is more definable than others, ‘Portrait of a Clear Day’ being a great example. The piano drives other tracks forward but mostly we’re taking about very calm, ambient, beatless tracks.
Lyrically, this album is stunning. Again, it can be overwhelming, but there is more than one way to read this music and it’s lyrics. I encourage anyone to ‘read’ these lyrics as ‘openly’ as they can do. For me, I get more from them if I do this, to concentrate on the beauty.
I am not going to do a track by track on this one. I don’t think it’s fitting. Every track has a critical place on this album and I love each and every one for that place. The instrumental ‘Summers End’ included. This is a palette cleansing couple of minutes of ambience that closes ‘Side A’ and prepares the listener for ‘Side B’. To follow ‘Summers Glass’ (which Byrne describes as the beating heart of the album) with ‘Summers End’ feels a very natural and rewarding decision. I understand that the title ‘Summers End’ refers to a song that Littmann wrote for Byrne when they first met.
This is so clearly 2023 Top 5 album material for me. This is everything that I love about music. I hope you find something you love in it. I hope it doesn’t overwhelm you, perhaps only when you want it to. It has at times overwhelmed me. It has made me think and question a lot of things.
It has kept me coming back to a single question.
Could anybody ever expect to influence anything as beautiful as this after they pass on?
thisisnothappening.net 
Thanks for this choice, Joey, it’s been a fascinating album to get grips with. It’s an incredibly beautiful record with some lovely songs on it, and it’s never been a chore getting to know it.
Of course, it’s hard to separate the music from the tragic circumstances of its genesis, re: the death of her life/music partner at such a horrifically young age (incidentally, do you know how he died? His death seems quite shrouded in mystery and there’s nothing on the internet that says what happened). To be honest, I was actually expecting a musically bleaker album than this, which is very much a continuation of the carefully constructed, delicate, literate folk music of Not Even Happiness.
I love the way she constructs her songs, and there are plenty of highlights on here – more on that in a bit. But then I found myself thinking – why didn’t I listen to NOT EVEN HAPPINESS more than I did? And that’s what I’ve been trying to work out for the last couple of weeks. What I’ve concluded is this: I think it’s related to Byrne’s vocal delivery, which almost feels quite reserved and closed – in stark contrast to the nature of the lyrics. When it works at its best, it can feel intimate and warm, but quite often, I find myself struggling to connect to her voice.
I think the other ‘but’ for me is that, though I absolutely love loads of folk music, I like my contemporary artists to add a bit of a twist to the genre, or for me it can feel like they’re standing too obvious on the shoulders of their influences. In the case of Byrne, that is so obviously Joni, though I can also hear Sandy Denny, Vashti Bunyan & Judee Sill. Half of this album leaps out at me as being its own beast, with songs that I want to take hold of and cherish. The opener and title track is absolutely magnificent, and I actually think it’s a great way to start the album, but generally it’s tracks that push the genre’s envelope that I’m connecting with the most. SUMMER GLASS is my favourite song on the album, because the mix of the bubbling electronica and her vocal work so well, as is the ambient loveliness of CONVERSATION IS A FLOWSTATE and I do wish there had been a few more songs in these vibes. But that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy most of the songs on the album (and by the way, DEATH IS THE DIAMOND is a devastatingly brilliant closer). But it does leans heavily on straight-down-the-line haunting folk ballads that do sometimes merge into each other.
So essentially, I’m enjoying this plenty, and I’ll definitely be returning to it throughout the year. But despite this being a very personal confessional album, perhaps I’ll always struggle to find the deepest inner core of Julie Byrne. That won’t stop me trying, because this is a lovely record and fitting testimony to her life with Eric Littmann.
Thanks for picking this album Joey, and for such a great, in-depth write up, on what’s an album that really does exist in two levels for me. After such a long time, I was surprised to realise that this really was the follow-up to Not Even Happiness. But it’s been worth the wait.
I’m not going to be able to add much to what you said around the album’s background or genesis. The tragedy doesn’t just loom large here, it’s woven into its very fabric. I wasn’t hugely familiar with her history with Eric Litmann, and as David’s said, the detail on his untimely death is somewhat a mystery. It’s none of our business of course, but when it’s so central to a piece of creativity, it’s always going to raise questions that may not be answered.
When I first listened to this album, it washed over me, such is it’s lightly worn beauty, its sonically warm feeling, and the ability it has to just wrap the listener in its layers. At a superficial level, it’s a really beguiling listen. It flows in waves, the simplicity of plucked guitar, soft vocals swimming in echo and the addition of synths that give another dimension to Byrne’s oeuvre. In fact I spent a good fortnight letting it do just that even before I had any inkling of what lay beneath. Spotify kept taking me back to Summer Glass, with it’s gently reverberating synths, cascading and adding something special to proceedings, where previously I sometimes felt that for all it’s beauty, Byrne’s work didn’t always stick on me.
Like any album we dive into, you need to get into its headspace. And that’s where it became a challenge. Because while I acknowledge the incredible way this album wears it’s emotion front and centre, it is something I’ve really struggled to allow in. The age we are now sadly means we are all no strangers to grief. And I can’t speak for others but the last year or so has been far too surrounded by it. Processing it is hard, and it’s a journey. There’s times when you want to confront it, or can’t avoid it, and there’s times where you just want to try and find the joy alongside it to try and move yourself into a different place.
The very existence of this album is a tragedy, and I honestly have no idea how Byrne could write it, let alone finish it, or see it released. I’m staggered by it. It’s a masterpiece of tolerance, emotion, and exposure. I would argue its that very style that allows it to be so raw. The incredible opening and title track, having finally gone for my walk with it, really broke me. “You’re always in the band / forever underground / name my grief to let it sing”. Singing directly to Litmann, surely, it feels devastating. As a way of processing such a cataclysmic event, it’s the ultimate catharsis. And carries through every song.
So yes, I’ve struggled to connect more deeply, because I’ve struggled with being able to. It just feels too raw, too close to the sun. And that’s fine. Grief really is a beast you can’t tame. You live with it. You find ways to exist around it. And so I’m going to take a while to really get comfortable with it. I’m happy to orbit around it and enjoy it’s musical beauty.
It flies by. It washes over you. It actually calms me, and I can let the lyrics drift around me without giving into them and that’s great for me. Because the additional musical layers here really do add something special. I get why David is perhaps not connecting. I don’t have that history so perhaps I’m free of that baggage. The opening and closing tracks are possibly two of the best I’ve listened to this year.
And for that, I thank you for picking it Joey.