‘There was so much I wanted to preserve’: Julie Byrne on making music through grief

Julie Byrne speaks like she sings, slowly and deliberately. Sometimes, when contemplating a question, she’ll pause for so long you wonder if she’s still on the other end of the phone.

The New York-based musician has the same approach to her work — always well-considered, never rushed. It’s a quality that complements her languid, limpid songs, probably best described as folk, but approaching something hymnal on her third and latest album, The Greater Wings.

Released last July, it came six years after the bucolic, earthy Not Even Happiness. Even by Byrne’s unhurried standards, this was a long wait between albums, but there was a tragic reason for the delay.

Eric Littmann, Byrne’s one-time boyfriend, long-time musical partner and dear friend, died suddenly a few months into making the album, in June 2021. Byrne and Littmann’s family have chosen not to discuss the circumstances surrounding his death. The Greater Wings, inevitably, is an exploration of grief, but it’s also a celebration of Littmann’s generosity and brilliance. He was a talented musician and producer who also worked as a medical researcher at the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Six months after Littmann passed, Byrne summoned the strength to continue working on The Greater Wings, bringing in Alex Somers, (a longtime acquaintance and producer of Sigur Rós and Julianna Barwick) to help complete the record.

“I had always felt respect and appreciation for his kindness and of course, his skill, and when we resumed writing it was so important to have a soft place to land and a trusted person to enter into that work with and he was a real blessing, both creatively and in terms of who he is as a person,” Byrne says.

Somers respected the vision that Byrne and Littman had for the record while imparting the work with his own expertise and creative flair.

“There are times where he challenged me or came up with approaches that I never could have conceived of,” Byrne says. “There are moments — especially in Flare or in Hope’s Return — and signatures that I really credit him for. The bridges, especially in both of those songs, could have only come about through his unique approach to what he does.”

Somers’ “wild but gentle” sense of humour also proved a welcome salve to the grief. “The first time we ever met to talk about potentially working on this record together he brought out a plate of rainbow gummy worms and Oreo cookies and when we did finally arrange to get into the studio together and went to the Catskills, he brought pink faux fur slippers for everyone in the band to wear as we set about this process of finishing this record under these impossible circumstances,” says Byrne.

That The Greater Wings was completed at all was an achievement, but to end up with such a transcendent record feels like a testament to Littmann’s enormous impact as an artist and person, pushing Byrne and her collaborators towards a worthy, remarkable tribute.

The tracks conjure the sky, whether clear, blue and sunny, or as an inky canvas embedded with twinkling stars and a glowing moon. Their centrepiece is as always, Byrne’s breathy, low vocals and her delicately finger-picked guitar, but Jake Falby’s string arrangements and Somers’ gentle, ethereal synths suffuse the songs with light, rendering them heavenly. They’re so gorgeous, the sense of loss is immediate – nothing this beautiful isn’t prefaced by profound pain – but present too is a sense of wonder and gratitude at having experienced such a bond in the first place.

Byrne says the shimmering Summer Glass was the easiest song on the record to write, fuelled by momentum and joy. “There was so much that I wanted to preserve and memorise in the lyrics and it came from this very euphoric feeling of collaboration with Eric,” Byrne says. “I also feel like what hasn’t been written about enough in so many of the reviews of this record is how much love and transformation and uncompromising joy lives in these songs. That’s the real story for us.”

Summer Glass took a few months to write; other songs including the title track and Flare took four or five years. “That was the duration of the story,” says Byrne. “You know, that’s what it required and it wouldn’t be what it is had I forced those songs to conclude any earlier than they did.”

The lyrics in the chorus of Flare were written in the final few days of mixing the record:One more hour gorgeous and wild/I could have done better, you’re not the only one/I know you, I see your determination/Remember our time for years to come.

“Those words have become so important to me now and I want to sing them on tour night after night,” Byrne says. “They remind me why, they remind me of our purpose in this, so it was worth what it took to find the right words.”

I saw Byrne debut The Greater Wings live in Brooklyn in July 2023 and was spellbound not only by her performance and soothing stage presence, but by her magnificent accompanying musicians, with whom Byrne clearly shares a strong kinship. Falby, a composer and violinist who has played for Beyonce and Lauryn Hill and who dazzled at the Brooklyn show, will perform alongside Byrne on her Australian and New Zealand tour. As with Littmann, these musicians are not just Byrne’s collaborators but her “chosen family”, and their closeness is palpable both on the record and in a live setting.

“There’s such a profound expression of that relationship in the music itself that really gives it its potency, it feels that it wouldn’t be what it is without these real relationships behind it,” says Byrne. “It’s a labor of love that has always been about the relationships that have made it all possible, it’s never been for the money.”

On her previous record, Not Even Happiness, Byrne sang that she was “made for the green, made to be alone”. Does she still feel that way? “I used to think so but I don’t really think so any more,” Byrne says. “That’s one of the ongoing lessons of grief – it clarifies what is truly important and what are our truest values, and really, relationships are everything.”

Since The Greater Wings was released, Byrne has been steadily touring the UK and the US and will go on to Europe after playing her Australian and New Zealand shows this month. Performing live again for the first time in four years, and especially under these circumstances, was daunting initially, but Byrne says the experience has been a cathartic one.

“I’m so hesitant to talk about grief because I feel that my work has been unfairly defined by it, but I will say that as a bereaved person, finding community and sharing space and sharing stories has been an anti-venom – it’s been such a medicine and nothing can replace that,” Byrne says. “And when I perform, that’s an aspect of it. I receive just as much from it as I hope to give to the people who I share space with and it changes me again and again.”

Julie Byrne will tour the east coast of Australia from January 17, including two shows at Sydney Festival (January 17 and 19) and one show in Melbourne (January 24).