Even before tragedy struck, Julie Byrne’s voice, it seems, was ready for it. A resonant, husky instrument, full of wisdom and velvety consolation, it had been fully formed from the time of the US folk singer’s earliest available recordings – 2014’s Rooms With Walls and Windows, which compiled a pair of cassette-only EPs the itinerant singer sold at gigs and DIY events. Accompanied by her own accomplished finger-picking, the numinous style of Byrne’s sketches faintly recalled Cat Power. Byrne’s sure grasp of the cloudy poetry of interpersonal relationships, meanwhile, suggested a familiarity with the Leonard Cohen songbook.
Nearly a decade later, Byrne, now 33, is touring a blockbuster of an album made of love, friendship and grief – The Greater Wings, released earlier this month to constellations of reviewer stars. These are songs full of elegiac ache for her former bandmate and ex-partner, Eric Littmann, who died suddenly in 2021, some way through writing and recording the album. (The album was finished with the help of friends and producer Alex Somers, formerly of duo Jónsi and Alex, with Sigur Rós’s lead singer.)
Many of these lush tracks were written well before the death of multi-instrumentalist Littmann, processing a variety of emotions. But Byrne’s explorations of nuanced feeling reverberate even more vigorously in the light of his loss. It’s an album to sink into: oceanic in sound and scope, but full of down-to-earth vignettes (“You lit my joint with the end of your cigarette,” sings Byrne on Summer Glass) that contrast with the vast interiority of her concerns. Her nimble guitar work is augmented by electronics and violin. It’s even better, and more special, live; Byrne notes that this is her first gig in London in six years.
Flanked by Katie Von Schleicher (mostly keys and electronics) and Jake Faltby (mostly violin), she arrives accompanied by a thrum of delicate oscillations, dressed all in black, but summery with it. Byrne begins, guitarless, with a song from the end of her second album, Not Even Happiness (2017), the breakout record that confirmed her hotline to the ineffable.
Much of Byrne’s early work was informed by the troubadour life the guitarist took up after leaving her childhood home, Buffalo, New York, to stretch her wings and discover her place in the world – if such a fabled thing even exists. Rootlessness and solitude became recurring themes; Seattle, New Orleans and New York City became homes for a while, then Chicago, then Albuquerque.
“And I have dragged my life across the country, and wondered if travel led me anywhere,” she croons on I Live Now As a Singer, a lyric that weighs up if love might change this habit. The feeling tonight is strangely churchy, the warm wood of the room and the venue’s high ceiling amplifying the track’s organ-like hum. In person, Byrne’s sung words are clearer than their recorded versions, but no less sonorous, as though she has reverb built organically into her voice box.
I Live Now As a Singer soundtracked the period that Byrne, at that point a confirmed solo singer-songwriter, began collaborating with Littmann; the two were romantically involved for a time, but continued to work together closely even afterwards. He helped add arrangements and oscillating electronics, augmenting the already almost-ambient feel of her work. Tonight, the Greater Wings songs double down on that feeling of otherworldly saturation, of an almost tactile sense of sound on the skin, with Byrne’s elegant voice hovering, seemingly, everywhere – like quadraphonic sound, but without the speakers.
The emotions of her songs marry up with the sound quality. On Moonless, she is watching “every particle move”, mesmerised by the “eternity” she has found. As serendipity would have it, the singer is backlit in that moment, with wisps of dry ice floating around her; we literally watch the particles move.
On Flare, Byrne longs for “one more hour, gorgeous and wild”. On Summer Glass, she declares: “You are the family that I chose.” The song is explicitly dedicated to Littmann, but afterwards, Byrne explains that her work takes into account the many other passed loved ones and experiences of loss in the room. “We invite all of them in,” she says.
Halfway through, there’s a new, unreleased track called ’22 that once again entwines music and love, where Byrne seems to reflect on her closeness to someone, “as vital as the song I breathe”. On the title track of The Greater Wings, she sings: “You’re always in the band, forever underground.” The phrase “forever underground” attests to Byrne and Littmann’s allegiance to their DIY networks and ways of working; a slogan, of sorts, drawn from the title of one of Littmann’s own works, as Phantom Posse.
If the atmosphere tonight is mostly reverent, and Byrne consistently mesmerising, she is also reassuringly down to earth. One band mistake is cheerfully overcome with humour – “Would you like to hear the second verse?” she quips.
Byrne ends even her heaviest songs with a smile and sometimes, a symbolic gathering of the air with her hand. Throughout, the mood varies only in microtones. On Conversation is a Flow State, her delivery is less folk-derived, more soulful. And one small detour into bass, electric guitars and some electronic rhythms for Hope’s Return just underlines how persuasive the unitary, unstinting atmosphere of Byrne’s music is: it feels like being slowly pickled in beauty.
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