Birds are singing and the summer air carries a cool electric hum as singer-songwriter Julie Byrne talks about moving on from the death of the friend and lover who brought so much life to her music.
“It was brutal for us trying to finish these songs without Eric there,” she says softly, her voice competing with a feathered friend’s enthusiastic warbling outside her apartment window.
“We were working as a community. In so many of those relationships, Eric was the connecting force. In ways, he also felt so present. It really felt like a devotional experience, those weeks, in the early winter of 2022.”
Eric Littmann was a lot of things to Byrne when he died two years ago when the duo were approaching the midpoint of what would become Byrne’s new record, The Greater Wings. First, they were lovers, lost in a mutual obsession, then friends – and always collaborators.
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We had sex maybe once a month. The constant rejection was soul-crushing, it felt like my ex didn’t even like me
She was bereft when he passed away in his native Chicago in June 2021, aged 31 (the cause of death withheld by request of his family). She also held on tightly to what they had – a burning love that had started romantic and then become platonic and which brings a chilling tingle to every fibre of The Greater Wings.
That love burns through the finished album – an unpacking of grief that trembles raw emotion even when contained within Byrne’s beautiful, fragile writing. “Love is intense. Loving is an intense effort,” she explains. “There’s so much devotion and commitment and spontaneity.”
She hopes these songs will be a testament to her time with Littmann, her artistic foil and touring partner, and a significant influence on her songwriting. His shadow lingers throughout the lp. Never name-checked, he is fully present in lyrics such as “Name my grief to let it sing/To carry you up on the greater wings”.
But The Greater Wings does more than document the passing of someone who changed her life. Completed last year with friends and collaborators, it’s a celebration of his memory and Byrne’s long journey back from grief. Of learning, day by day, to face the world again. And learning, too, how to make music again.
“It’s meant to live as a memorial and as a testament to the moments between us,” she says. “And yes, of course that includes grief and heartache. It’s so much more than that.”
Byrne was born in Buffalo in 1990. She inherited her love of music from her father, from whom she picked up her “finger-style”, by which the strings are plucked directly rather than with a plectrum, which is believed to increase the music’s expressiveness and dynamic range. She became more serious about playing after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and could no longer pick up a guitar: music was a way of honouring her father.
She left Buffalo at 18 and worked as a park ranger at Central Park in New York. She moved from Pittsburg to New Orleans and Chicago, where she met Littmann, who produced her second long player, 2017′s Not Even Happiness.
That record was her calling card. Pitchfork described it as a “balm”, adding that “in both sound and sensibility, it strives for clarity, that ultimate marker of enlightenment” before comparing her to Leonard Cohen. “One of the finest albums of the year”, agreed the NME, praising a “roving, lovelorn narrative… it’s impossible not to be spellbound by”.
Byrne is anxious Littmann’s life and his death not be reduced to “an interesting plot twist” in the story of The Greater Wings, and journalists have been requested to avoid direct questions about his death or bringing up his name unprompted. This follows interviews in which she was asked to revisit the trauma which, says her management, had the potential to affect her mental health negatively.
The Greater Wings had been in a state of quasi-completion when he died. Understandably unable to continue in the immediate aftermath, she put the project aside until early last year. But she never considered abandoning the album, painful though it was to go back.
“Songs were in various states of fruition. Most of them had been written. But, in turn, in terms of the recording process – some were skeletons and others had been really given a lot of mine and Eric’s time and attention.”
Byrne’s conversion is sprinkled with thoughtful pauses. She falls quiet again when asked if returning to a project she had begun with Littmann was challenging. “I’ve been asked this question, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put words to what it was like.”
The birdsong grows louder as she chats over FaceTime. Byrne grew up in rural New York state, but, though the sound effects suggest otherwise, she is speaking from the city, where she returned after Littmann.
“I’m in my apartment. I’m blessed to have some trees on this block. My neighbours have an extra lot that they keep as a garden and as a shrine. There’s a lot of birdsong on this block.”
If enveloped in a grey haze of grief, The Greater Wings shares with her earlier work a powerfully lulling quality. Listening to the record is like inhaling cold, pure air – it’s a lot to take in, but it makes you feel fully alive.
Even in the city, nature is essential to her, she explains. True to that, The Greater Wings ripple with naturalistic imagery. “The sky is moonless/and the sea surrounds me,” she sings on the track Moonless. “I just wanted to feel the sun on my skin,” she continues on Summer Glass.
“The natural world is so adaptive. It’s all around me now, here in the city. There are ways of finding spells of stillness, wherever I find myself. I actually think my writing is more about being struck by my present experience more than it’s contingent on a specific environment. This is the world that I live in.”
Byrne comes to Dún Laoghaire in November for a show. As her surname suggests, she’s of Irish descent and, perhaps having her fill talking about grief, speaks enthusiastically about her genealogy.
“I am from Irish heritage. My great grandfather immigrated to Buffalo from Ireland. He was a multi-instrumentalist and a finger-style guitarist. And was someone who could pretty much pick up any instrument and be able to find a song. Then my dad picked up that skill and I grew up with the sound of his playing. When I was a teenager, I kind of came into it myself. So that’s my connection to Ireland.”
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Her voice speeds into a singsong as she reveals that she recently acquired a book of Irish proverbs. Would I like to hear some? I nod, even though we’re communicating by phone, and she can’t see me. She fires on.
“Okay, these two are the ones that I love. ‘Three things that are never seen: a blade’s edge, the wind and love.’ The next one is, ‘even buried embers may turn to flames’.”
She sighs. Talking to journalists is challenging because it means talking about Eric Littmann. One senses it will almost be a relief when the album comes out. Then, rather than have her discuss her grief, we can hear her sing about it and do with it what we will.
“I’m feeling so much in this process of preparing to release the album. And also the process of preparing to transmit the songs live. I’ve really been yearning for that direct connection with my audience and my friends and my community. And with finding a home on stage again.”
The Greater Wings is released July 7th. Julie Byrne plays Limerick and Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, in November
