Julie Byrne

JULIE BYRNE is a wanderer. Having counted Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, New Orleans and New York as her home in recent years. It's these travels that inspire and influence her most, giving us a glimpse inside her own quietly mystical world and her unique slant on the one the rest of us happen to inhabit.

Her debut long player 'Rooms With Walls and Windows' was a true modern-day word of mouth success and was voted number 7 in Mojo's best albums of the year and Huffington Post called it "2014's Great American Album". A stunning set of front porch psych-folk that unknowingly recalled the greats but very much for our time.

Following US and European jaunts to help spread the word, Byrne returned to her family homestead in Buffalo to craft her follow up, 'Not Even Happiness'. Offering an altogether bigger picture to its predecessor through a wider, yet subtle, exploration of instruments and atmospherics, the album reveals an artist who has grown in confidence over time. It's due for release in January 2017 on a new imprint Basin Rock and is confirmed for Rough Trade's Album of the Month selection. First single 'Natural Blue' picked up plenty of attention including Pitchfork's Best New Track.

In the live arena she enchants, leaving rooms and festival crowds mesmerised by her voice who find a real connection with Byrne's intimate songs. This feeling and experience is often reciprocated.

This is a 14+ event

Gigs

Leeds

Brudenell Social Club

American songwriter Julie Byrne announces The Greater Wings, her first record in over six years and her debut with Ghostly International, with a video for lead single Summer Glass. A self-taught musician and characteristically private artist that has committed her life to her work, Byrne now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous, and life-affirming music of her career.

‘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 explains. ‘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.’

The Greater Wings was written across several seasons, pulling imagery from nights on tour, periods of isolation, and the drives cross-country for its various collaborations between Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Support is mui zyu. As mui zyu, British Hong Kong artist Eva Liu navigates the tricky territory of ever-changing identity, merging fantasy and folklore to create a stage for self-acceptance and deliverance.

This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Julie Byrne + mui zyu

zi oi 自爱

mui zyu 

Manchester

Hallé St Peter's

This event will take place in EartH Theatre.

Julie Byrne releases The Greater Wings, her first album in over six years, via Ghostly International. The album is a testament to patience and determination, the willingness to transform through the desolation of loss, the vitality of renewal, and the courage to rise, forever changed. A self-taught musician that has committed her life to her work, she now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous, and life-affirming music of her career, as evidenced by the album’s singles “Summer Glass,” “The Greater Wings,” and “Moonless.” While they hold the plasticity of grief and trauma, the songs are universally resonant, unbridled in their devotion and joy, held up by the love and alliance of a chosen family.

Byrne leans further into atmospheres both expansive and intimate; the lush, evocative songcraft flows between her signature fingerpicked guitar, synthesizer, and a newly adopted piano, made wider by flourishes of harp and strings. It is the transcendent sound of resource, of friendship that was never without romance, of loyalty that burns from within like a heart on fire, and the life force summoned in unrepeatable moments — raw, gorgeous, and wild.

This is a 14+ event. Each under 18 must be accompanied by a responsible adult who is over 21 (1:1 ratio). In order to verify your age, ID may be requested. For this reason, we advise that all customers bring valid ID. For further information see Age and ID in FAQ’s. Right of admission reserved.

EartH

London

Julie Byrne + mui zyu

This is an all ages event (under 14s must be accompanied by an adult 18+).

Julie Byrne

Upcoming events