Julie Byrne has shared her first album in six years, The Greater Wings.
Byrne made The Grater Wings with a small crew of close collaborators across Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. On the record, her folksy fingerpicked guitar is bolstered by synthesizer, harp, strings, and Byrne’s latest instrument, the piano. Thematically, the album meditates on stages of grief, but bittersweetly underscored by the power of resilience in its wake.
“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 says in a press release. “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.”
Byrne is celebrating the release with a 2023 tour that will take her across the UK, Europe, and the US, including a show at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom. Find tickets here.
Stream The Greater Wings via Apple Music or Spotify below.
Byrne’s last album was 2017’s Not Even Happiness, which Consequence named one of the top 50 albums of that year.
The Greater Wings Artwork:
The Greater Wings Tracklist:
01. The Greater Wings
02. Portrait of a Clear Day
03. Moonless
04. Summer Glass
05. Summer’s End
06. Lightning Comes Up From the Ground
07. Flare
08. Conversation is a Flowstate
09. Hope’s Return
10. Death Is the Diamond