Julie Byrne’s third album unfolds like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. Across ten lovely tracks, The Greater Wings offers poetry-like musings across serene chamber pop, and several lines stick up as ones that will stay in your mind for a while.

The record isn’t as secure as its simple instrumentation makes it out to be — often, we see Byrne at a period of confusion or even desperation. “I drank the air to be nearer to you,” she admits on the title track’s opening line. On the next song, “Portrait Of A Clear Day,” she sings, “How many times I watched the sun rise and die / You know I’ve been alone,” eventually circling back to a similar lyric on the darker “Hope’s Return”, where she sings, “I need walks long enough to free me from my mind / A sense of horizon.” Despite a backing track similar to the joy of Harry Styles’ “Cherry” or many songs on Sufjan Stevens’ Call Me By Your Name soundtrack, “Lightning Comes Up From The Ground” is likely the album’s deepest and most grounded song. Reminiscing about a past relationship dug up from the grave, she admits, “I want to be a fantasy to you,” later declaring, “Death to the old ways, but who am I without them?”

The record’s softest song, “Death Is The Diamond”, sees the eventual dissolution of the relationship, with Byrne coming to terms with what happened in the past. That doesn’t mean there’s no time for reflection, though, as she sings, “This has been no easy religion / Written, braided, lived, and tried.” As an ode to the future’s promise, she says, “I don’t want to feel anything but the moving ground.” Just from her wavering vocals, you can tell how excruciating letting go of the relationship was, especially after she admitted on the powerful “Moonless”, “I found it there in the room with you / Whatever eternity is.”

“Summer Glass” is about as peppy as a Byrne song can get — a staircasing synthpop riff is encased with harp chords as she sings about the possibility of reignition, and existentialism in the process: “One day the skin that holds me will be dust,” she ruminates, “For now, I want to go further in / Into moment, into vision, into you.” This kind of self-knowledge, a galvanization towards goals and ideas returns on the gorgeously layered “Flare”, where she sings, “There are times I’m in touch with who I truly want to be.”

For all of its similarity in sound and lyrical content, The Greater Wings is a dynamic performance. It’s music that, on first glance, is honest and lovely, but reveals itself more over repeated listens. Sure, there are moments where an injection of energy could have helped and made the record more of a stunner, but The Greater Wings is easy listening that’ll innocuously cut deep with its heartbreaking revelations.

Pre-order The Greater Wings by Julie Byrne HERE