Julie Byrne

Tapes, Not Even Happiness and The Greater Wings

Julie Marie Byrne was born in 1990 in Buffalo, New York, and left at 18, living in Pittsburgh, Northampton, Chicago, Lawrence, Seattle and New Orleans and studying environmental science; she was a seasonal ranger in Central Park in 2016, and Bandcamp Daily says she settled in Brooklyn before her second album. She learned guitar at 17, modeling her fingerpicking on her father's playing. Her first releases were cassette EPs, You Would Love It Here (2012) and Julie Byrne (2013, though the album article says both were 2012), compiled as Rooms with Walls and Windows on Orindal on January 21, 2014. That album was recorded in Chicago by Jake Acosta; Pitchfork gave it 7.4.

Not Even Happiness came out on Basin Rock in the UK on January 13, 2017 and on Ba Da Bing in the US on January 27. It was produced, engineered and mixed by Eric Littmann, who also played synthesizer, with strings arranged by Jake Falby and backing vocals by Johanna Warren. Metacritic scores it 82, and Pitchfork gave it 8.3 as Best New Music in a review by Jenn Pelly; Spin placed it ninth on its 2017 year-end list. The Greater Wings (July 7, 2023, Ghostly International) was produced by Falby, Littmann and Alex Somers, with sessions in Chicago, Buffalo and Los Angeles in 2018, 2021 and 2022; Metacritic scores it 91, and it was her first US chart entry, at 90 on the Top Current Album Sales. She also released an EP with Laugh Cry Laugh in 2023.