Julie Byrne - Rooms With Walls and Windows (2014)

Rooms With Walls and Windows is the first album by Seattle-by-way-of-Chicago-by-way-of-Buffalo singer, songwriter & guitarist Julie Byrne. Blending psychedelic & traditional folk elements, Julie Byrne creates a highly personal & quietly mystical world that echoes the early work of Leonard Cohen & Vashti Bunyan.

Rooms With Walls and Windows' twelve tracks were collected from two limited edition cassette releases, recorded between 2011 & 2012 by Jake Acosta in Chicago, IL. Each song was recorded live, with Julie accompanying herself on fingerpicked acoustic guitar or keyboard. Rooms With Walls & Windows was lovingly remastered for vinyl by Owen Ashworth & Matthew Barnhart.

"Julie Byrne, who recently moved to the northwest from Chicago, crafts elegant, deliberately wrought songs that chronicle memory, hope, and loss using finely crafted lyrics and complex fingerpicked guitar run through delay. The somber, dreamlike quality of her songs is similar to a stripped-down Grouper, with restraint and measure in her deep, unusual vocal timbre."
- Caitlin Roberts, Hungry Cloud Darkening

"The strong vocals, which you might rightfully assume would be pushed up front and center, instead opt to hang back to form a playful and close knit relationship both with the gently plucked guitar tones. as well as, it seems, the sound of the room(s?) the tracks were recorded in. This tight control of vocal inflection, combined with a strong narrative and a frequent direct-address style of songwriting, is extremely evocative and affective. The subjects of the songs are as much relational as they are pastoral, though in that charmingly urban way in which everything natural gains a unique, almost mystical significance."
- Luke Carrell, Impose Magazine

“Byrne has a remarkable voice, one that is completely unique. Her songs have a pastoral charm, but also resonate with something that could be argued as experimental. It’s the same line that defined Nick Drake’s catalog… they both manage to craft organic, earthy tones that still incorporate a modern storytelling vibe. 10/10”
- Iann Robinson