On the luminous title track to her new album, The Greater Wings, singer-songwriter Julie Byrne tilts the well-worn language of grief. “To carry you up on greater wings” approaches weepy AM-radio-ballad territory; “To carry you up on the greater wings,” as she sings here, injects slightly more specificity, and suddenly, the wings suggest themselves.
Subtle choices like these, along with the rare power of her voice, give Byrne’s folk its mystical heft. “I drank the air to be nearer to you,” she murmurs in the opening line—another near-cliche, and another choice: Think how much stronger “nearer to you” is than “closer to you” would have been. The following lines radiate outward until we’ve reached the end of the moon and stars and touched on the meaning of existence: “Voices widen through the room/Distant galaxies move/I’m not here for nothing.” The strings pick up where Byrne leaves off, spiraling into a cavern of reverb, and the song culminates in wordless beauty and affirmation.
