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Jun 06, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Tonje Thilesen

Julie Byrne is releasing a new album, The Greater Wings, on July 7 via Ghostly International. Now she has shared the album’s third single, “Moonless.” Listen below, followed by Byrne’s upcoming tour dates.

A press release calls “Moonless” an “ode to the glistening darkness.” Byrne partially wrote the song on an island off southern Portugal where she was taking part in an artist residency. “I remember walking through the dune systems on the ocean side of Culatra, the noises of the docks, the scent of tidal flats. The land itself, as a coastal formation, in a constant state of movement between erosion and growth,” she says in the press release.

Byrne adds: “Something I love about being a songwriter, especially as a queer woman, is being able to have the last word in my work, becoming myself line by line. This is a breakup song, and it’s the first song I wrote on piano.”

Previously she shared the album’s first single, “Summer Glass,” via a music video. “Summer Glass” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then she shared the album’s title track, “The Greater Wings.”

Byrne’s last album was 2017’s acclaimed Not Even Happiness.

“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 said in a previous press release. “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.”

Byrne started recording the album with her longtime creative partner, the late Eric Littmann (who produced Not Even Happiness). She finished the album with producer Alex Somers (Sigur Rós, Julianna Barwick), recording in the Catskills of New York.

Julie Byrne Tour Dates:

7/15 - Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s
7/16 - Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s
7/18 - Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records *
7/23 - Hebden, UK @ Bridge Trades Club
7/26 - London, UK @ Kings Place Hall ~
7/28 - Brighton, UK @ St Barts ~
8/18-20 - Brecon Beacons, Wales @ Green Man Festival
9/5 - Seattle,WA @ Fremont Abbey
9/6 - Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
9/8 - San Francisco, CA @ Swedish American Hall
9/9 - Felton, CA @ Felton Music Hall
9/12 - Los Angeles, CA @ Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever
9/14 - Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy and Harriet’s
9/19 - Washington, DC @ Songbyrd ^
9/20 - Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church (Sanctuary) ^
9/21 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom ^
9/29 - Providence, RI @ Columbus Theatre ^
9/30 - Somerville, MA @ Crystal Ballroom ^
11/16 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
11/17 - Glasgow, UK @ Mono
11/18 - Manchester, UK @ St Michael’s Church
11/22 - Bristol, UK @ The Jam Jar
11/24 - Limerick, IE @ Dolans Upstairs
11/25 - Dublin, IE @ Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
11/26 - Belfast, IE @ The Black Box

* w/ Taryn Blake Miller (fka Your Friend)
~ w/ Juni Habel
^ w/ LEYA

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