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Feb 10, 2017There’s something to be said for the potential for personal growth inherent in traveling without a destination, and every song here is the sound of Julie Byrne making peace with her restlessness.
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Feb 7, 2017Like Joni Mitchell’s spare 1976 masterpiece Hejira, Not Even Happiness is a lonesome travel album par excellence: a document of transience and half-formed inspiration, reveling in riddles and paradox rather than firm conclusions.
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Jan 17, 2017However she managed it, whatever we will take from it as it settles, delving further past its placid surface into its cavernous mystery will surely remain one of the year's earliest true pleasures.
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Jun 28, 2017The result is a record that’s concerned about faith, death, and the metaphysical. It’s heady stuff but grounded with vignettes of everyday activities--a beautiful, comforting second work from the singer.
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Feb 6, 2017Blending folk, new age, and silence, Not Even Happiness is a balm. In both sound and sensibility, it strives for clarity, that ultimate marker of enlightenment.
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Feb 8, 2017Beyond the hushed sounds of the record, Byrne, for the most part, is not timid but in possession of a rich confidence.
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Jan 31, 2017Each time you listen to it, you feel like you’re gaining a little piece of rare knowledge from the singer’s weathered and experienced life. It’s hard to fault an album that makes you feel such a connection, and Byrne’s latest does just that.
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Jan 26, 2017Not Even Happiness is a triumph of subtlety, proof that music doesn't have to be forceful to be powerful.
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Jan 18, 2017Not Even Happiness is a work of intimate loveliness, surely one of the most flat-out beautiful songwriter albums of a year that is just getting going.
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Jan 17, 2017Abetted by some sparse orchestration, the beauty of Not Even Happiness takes effect even if you can’t make out Byrne’s measured poeticism: the voice is a balm.
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Jan 13, 2017With Not Even Happiness she takes the listener on a beautiful, thoughtful journey.
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Jan 12, 2017This second album might not hang together were it not for the fact Byrne herself appears immersed within the worlds she sings about--there’s something pleasingly organic about the way she almost seems to exhale the melodies.
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Jan 11, 2017A timeless creation, the record’s nine carefully crafted tracks draw gracefully on the past 50 years of folk music.
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Jan 6, 2017Not Even Happiness is intent on taking us back to the garden and in these cynical times, perhaps there’s a vacuum across the ocean for artists that are warmer, purer, less needy than the careerist indie-rock that has gone before. Long may this Morning Dove not Tweet.
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Jan 5, 2017Tenderly, expertly picked guitar supports the voice: Byrne doesn't so much sing as exhale and her unforced delivery serves to mesmerise.
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MojoJan 3, 2017There's something romantic about this quiet, thoughtful music, but there's a sad quality to it too. [Feb 2017, p.94]
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UncutJan 3, 2017The production has opened up enormously. [Feb 2017, p.32]
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Jan 3, 2017With Not Even Happiness she’s spreading her wings musically. There’s more polish to the production, yet the joy that is her storytelling, heartfelt singing and inventive guitar playing are the songs heartbeat.
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Jan 26, 2017While the album makes more of an impression as a whole than do individual songs, it makes a lasting one.
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Jan 17, 2017Not Even Happiness isn’t just an extension of the spare, if sometimes unremarkable, compositional elegance of her debut, Room With Walls and Windows. The production is slightly enhanced, and she’s also raised the stakes by featuring a wider array of instruments.
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Jan 12, 2017The best moments on the album are the ones that grab you just as things start feeling too samey.
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Q MagazineJan 3, 2017Occasionally, Byrne subtly expands her musical palette with strings and woodwind, but never at the expense of her own guitar and vocals. [Feb 2017, p.111]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 46 out of 57
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Mixed: 8 out of 57
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Negative: 3 out of 57
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Nov 24, 2021
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Jun 28, 2018
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Feb 15, 2017