When you listen to Julie Byrne sing, it sounds like you’re listening to a music box. Her songs are slow, backed by a creaky picking of a guitar, and a voice that’s sheer, timid, powdery. But her songs can still fill a room–her lyrics straightforward and haunting in her aching delivery, crossing themes of loneliness, finding home, losing yourself.
In the song “Holiday” off her premiere album Rooms With Walls and Mirrors she sings, “We parted by my birthday and without you here I am a different age. How bright I had been then and fear it may not ever show again. So continue to live alone and speak not your thoughts of land or holiday and I will leave again and make all new plans to fill the space that you left.” The rest of the album follows that same emotional trend–leaving you frozen in time, captivated.
Julie Byrne is from New York, but she’s lived everywhere, it seems–which only gives her songs more character and richness, even though they all linger similarly and steadily centered. Her new album Not Even Happiness is due out in January on Ba Da Bing! Records, and the singles “Natural Blue” and “Follow My Voice” have already received positive reviews. In the beginning of the new year, Byrne opens for the band Whitney (which has already sold out), but she plays solo at Rough Trade at the end the month.
Rough Trade
Janurary 27
9 p.m.
$12
axs.com
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