It’s been over 6 years since her breakthrough album Not Even Happiness; today, Julie Byrne returns with her lead single Summer Glass, taken from her forthcoming album The Greater Wings.
The Greater Wings, released in July on Ghostly International, 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 (Phantom Posse, Steve Sobs), 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).
Perhaps Byrne’s most important lyrical gift is her ability to combine the personal and universal…and wrap them all up in terse and surprising expressions that often approach epiphanies.
Thomas Blake, Folk Radio
Talking of her new album, Byrne says:
“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,” Byrne explains. “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.”
At the heart of the record is “Summer Glass,” a luminous, euphoric synth ballad tracing themes of intimacy, memorial, and deeply personal alliance.
ALBUM TRACK LIST:
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
UK & IRELAND TOUR DATES 2023:
23/7 – Hebden Bridge Trades Club
26/7 – London Kings Place Hall
28/7 – Brighton St Bartholomew’s Church
18-20/8 – Green Man Festival Brecon Beacons
16/11 – Leeds Brudenell Social Club
17/11 – Glasgow Mono
18/11 – Manchester St. Michael’s Church
22/11 – Bristol The Jam Jar
24/11 – Limerick Dolans Upstairs
25/11 – Dublin Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
26/11 – Belfast The Black Box
Tickets: https://juliemariebyrne.com/