Review: Julie Byrne, The Jam Jar – ‘A luscious collection of songs’

Anyone who’s ever gone through a significant trauma will know that things left behind take on a different, often heavier, meaning in the aftermath.

In the case of Buffalo native Julie Byrne, it was her new album that assumed this significance.

Byrne’s producer and long-time collaborator, Eric Littmann, who had worked on both 2017’s Not Even Happiness and this year’s The Greater Wings, died unexpectedly in 2021 at 31 years old.

Left to complete the album herself while mourning an essential member of her chosen family, Byrne worked with producer Alex Somers to finish what she and Littmann had started.

The result is a luscious collection of songs about love, loss and longing, but also, with the acute pain of Littmann’s passing in the background and Byrne’s ability to weave the everyday into the poetic, these songs could just as easily be ruminations on grief.

Opening for Byrne tonight, mui zyu deliver glistening, reworked versions of tracks from their debut album, Rotten Bun for an Eggless Century.

It’s an album that deserves multiple listens and that will rank high on year-end lists if there is any god at all.

When Byrne reaches the stage, it is clear she is here to take us through mostly new material, which is fine with everyone; since its release in July, The Greater Wings has received plaudits from critics across the board, praising its pure, celestial beauty and willingness to meet grief head-on.

Tonight, Byrne sings with a blissful, cosmic lilt that carries you gently, caringly, into the ether (aided dutifully by the mad-yet-somehow-logical shapes and colour splashes on the back wall of The Jam Jar).

There’s something fragile about it, too – a perfection that could shatter at any moment. It does in fact: partway through the new album’s title track, Byrne stops and restarts, saying that she was unhappy with the notes she was hitting.

If anyone in the audience had noticed this, they didn’t show it and were instead just glad to see her play. Later, Byrne brings up this need for perfection, admitting that it’s less important to be perfect than to simply show up, perhaps a musing on doing right by Littmann not by playing exactly as the record but by playing at all.

After this, Byrne seems to soften and let us in closer. By the end of the set, Byrne quips that she’s started to treat the stage like her living room, and indeed she has, leaving pedals, stands and cables strewn all over the place.

She’s made herself comfortable and treats us like dear friends.

When someone faints during album-closer Death Is The Diamond, the only song to have been written without Littmann’s input, Byrne halts proceedings to ensure their safety before carrying on – even then, she still checks in with the crowd to be sure we want to hear the song again.

There are many ways to grieve and Julie Byrne is honouring her close friend in the best way she knows: by sharing their final work with the world.

Sure, there might be the odd mistake here and there, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be.

Main photo: Rich Kemp

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