A more confident beast than her debut, Not Even Happiness adds atmospheric instrumentation and electronic flourishes to Julie Byrne's unusual guitar tunings and fingerpicked melodies, moving the songs from the frontporch into subtle anthemia.

Whether witnessing the Pacific Northwest for the first time (“Melting Grid”), the morning sky in the mountains of Boulder (“Natural Blue”), or a journey fragrant with rose water or reading Frank O’Hara aloud from the passenger seat during a drive through the Utah desert into the rainforest of Washington State (“The Sea As It Glides”), Not Even Happiness is Byrne’s beguiling ode to the fringes of life.

“With grace and acuity, Byrne shows how the most commonplace aspects of life can turn supernatural if you tilt your eye a way, how the simplest things-melodies, open space, the sky-are often the strongest.” - Pitchfork