Julie Byrne’s voice sounds like a thing out of time, but luckily for us, Byrne is coming into her own right now in 2017. After a small, independent release on a Chicago based DIY label in January of 2014, Byrne’s debut record Rooms With Walls And Windows was passed along like a talisman, gaining her a small trickle of loyal but devoted fans. Nearly three years later, her follow-up record is arriving with quite a bit more fanfare; an interview with Stereogum, a feature in NPR, and just yesterday a feature in Pitchfork mean that Byrne won’t be rescinding back into obscurity after Not Even Happiness comes out tomorrow.
Though she’s lived all over, Byrne is originally from Buffalo, New York, a place that deeply impacted her as a creator and a person. Currently, she lives in New York, and even spent last year working as a park ranger in Central Park. The many moments on Not Even Happiness that feel like deep communion with pastoral settings are clearly influenced by this work. She plays close, unsettling melodies on acoustic guitar that are occasionally gilded with wind instruments, like flute, or violins and other strings, and only took up guitar when her father’s illness prohibited him from making music himself anymore. Byrne doesn’t read music, and chooses to construct her songs purely by ear. She recorded Not Even Happiness in her childhood home in New York with producer Eric Littmann and additional contributions from Jake Falby (Mutual Benefit) on strings.
The album sounds like it could belong in any century or any setting, or explained in another way, it also sounds like a machine that’s been moving for a long time gently coming to rest. There is a sense of happy finality in this record that reminds me of the peace that comes from watching a good marriage begin, or the feeling of returning to the wonderful banality of home after an exciting trip. Taking her time to experience the things this record is about, and write about them only when she was ready means the album feels completely settled. She’s by no means finished, but on Not Even Happiness Byrne sounds like she’s arrived, and perhaps that’s just it, because an anecdote full of similar feeling spurred her to select the album’s title.
“The title of the album comes from a letter I wrote to a friend after a trip to Riis Park’s ‘The People’s Beach,'” she writes in the album’s press release. “It was the first warm afternoon of the year. I walked alongside the Atlantic as the Earth came alive for the sun. There was a palpable sense of emergence to everything. I felt it in myself too, and remember thinking I would trade that feeling for nothing… not even happiness.”
The bookend to that moment comes in a line on “Melting Grid,” a song she wrote upon visiting the Pacific Northwest for the first time, her feelings summarized in: “I exist to be dreaming still.” Byrne’s songwriting is steeped in close analysis of time and how it slowly or swiftly changes our emotions, and doing her own thoughts justice is part of why Byrne took a good, long three years to follow up her debut. Sometimes, going slow is the only way to go. Read our conversation centered around the record below.
“Natural Blue” seems like the obvious entry point here, especially given it was the lead single. I love the whole album but this song really sticks out above the rest. I read what you said about the process behind writing that one, but I was wondering if it has taken on new meanings for you since that moment in Colorado that inspired it?
That’s a good question. I rarely think about where that song comes from, but now and again I’m struck with memories from that time, mostly I can’t believe how quickly the years have passed or how different I feel now. There is a brief poem that my friend Damian Weber wrote which I included as a lyric in that song with his permission: “Walk forward from your open wound.” Sometimes the potency of that line resurfaces in me, usually when I’m most in need of its guidance.
The album title Not Even Happiness implies that you’re comparing or contrasting it to something, can you talk about your relationship to happiness in the context of music?
In my songs I often share reflections that I rarely give voice to in my daily life. I’ve found it liberating to hold such a space of intimacy and revelation with the mystery of those who listen. In part, I write in the hope that others will find resonance there. Performing these songs has been a gateway into presence for me and now I focus on using it as an opportunity to connect more fully with others by sharing with them the truth of my heart.
You’re originally from Buffalo, New York but have traveled a lot, do you think there’s one place that had a deep impact on you and your art? If it was Buffalo, how and why? Or if somewhere else, what was the impact?
What a thoughtful question… It’s difficult for me to choose one place in particular but the impact of my time in Buffalo and my connection to the creative community there will always reside in me. Back then, Buffalo felt like a city that was very much beyond the reach of external influence. It had its own way of life and its own conception of beauty and magic. My pastimes there were surreal. My friends and I would climb in the abandoned central train station and the old grain mills along the Buffalo River, especially Concrete Central. There were also a number of punk houses where folks lived for under $200 a month.
Some of the most badass among them lived in an old funeral home that they had converted into a show space. Others lived in a squat house that was a major hub in the summer as it represented a sanctuary for freight train hoppers in transit from all across the country. There were many abandoned houses in Buffalo in the decades after its industry left and many arsons followed. I’d explore the ruins with a friend of mine who rehabilitated houses that he purchased off the city’s demolition list. I found many things among the rubble: Skeleton keys, old beer bottles, playing cards, toys from a bygone era, photographs of lives that I’d know nothing of. I was younger then and of course I wanted to enshrine everything I found in my bedroom but he taught me how to observe the ruins with respect to their past: Take nothing.
I read that you previously worked with Mutual Benefit, what was your relationship to that collective like and what was the timeframe?
I met Jordan Lee in the summer of 2013 at his home at the time in Boston. He had set up a show in his backyard for my tourmate and I. We had arrived in the late afternoon, and within an hour of meeting, we were hanging out in Jordan’s basement bedroom where he had a humble recording studio set up by the door. I tried a few backing vocals for Advanced Falconry. A year and a half later in late 2014, I toured with Mutual Benefit on the west coast but haven’t had much connection to the collective as a whole since. I do however have the great honor of collaborating with Jake Falby who also plays violin in Mutual Benefit.
You mentioned that you’ve been working in Central Park, which is such a sacred reference point for so many people. How did working within the space change your perception of it?
I worked there this past summer as a seasonal ranger. Mostly, I had no understanding as to the extent of the wildlife that find refuge in the city parks and having the opportunity to observe especially the bird life in those areas was always a thing of wonder. The osprey nests near the salt marsh in south Brooklyn and the Rockaways, black-crowned night herons and cormorants in the ponds in Central Park. Giant egrets and snowy egrets of the inlet in Inwood Hill. I miss it.
“I Live Now As A Singer” also feels like a slightly different space than the rest of the record, like it ends the album by pointing toward something new. Can you talk about the backstory on that one?
I was exiting a relationship and so was the person that I had fallen deeply in love with. He had been a friend of mine for a while. Once we finally spoke to the feelings we had carried in silence for each other, there was no going back, it was like glass breaking. “I Live Now As A Singer” comes from the volatile dissolution of our respective partnerships and into the life we chose together. The song was written between Brooklyn, Berlin and the rural Southtowns outside of Buffalo, New York where it was finally completed.
The closing lyrics of “I Live Now” comes from Halloween night of 2015 when we had walked three miles on the tracks of the Pennsylvania railroad to a swamp called Sinking Ponds. It received its name because the country tried to build five bridges over the water, all of which sunk deep into the mud. We sat in silence in the near darkness. I remember the trilling of life through the swamp.
You mentioned learning guitar after your father was no longer able to play. When was that, and how does he feel about the music you’ve made since that happened?
Yes, I recorded this album with the 1976 Martin guitar that I inherited from him. It is my joy that I’ve made him proud.
Not Even Happiness is out tomorrow, 1/27 via Ba Da Bing/Grapefruit Records. Get it here and stream it below via Hype Machine.
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