Maria Somerville on Luster, an Irish dream-pop masterpiece

To create her sophomore album for 4AD, Somerville grew an entirely new community and sound.

Maria Somerville’s new album Luster digs deep into the idea of what happens when you stop yearning for home and find yourself back in the area that raised you. For Somerville that is Connemara, a mountainous rural town on the west coast of Ireland known for its gothic-revival castle which has lay in ruins since the 1930s. When she made her 2019 debut All My People, Somerville was living in Dublin and feeling homesick, something reflected in an album of hushed folk music soaked in reverb and delay.

The pandemic turned a longing into a reality as she moved home to be with family and get out of the city. A sense of escape and embrace of nature is palpable across Luster. Whether she is swimming through the caves of the Atlantic coast (“Garden”) or handling wild strawberries (“Violet”), the physicality of Ireland pushed to the forefront of the songs. “Corrib” is perhaps the most overt love letter and takes its name after a local lake. “Up,” meanwhile, imagines healing a broken heart by burying it in the peat of a nearby field.

Briefly back in Dublin, where she appears via Zoom in a sun-dappled conservatory, Somerville says the slower pace of country life allowed her to take notice of things she had ignored during her youth. Having previously worked in isolation, Somerville also found Connemara to be ideally set-up for collaboration. Groups of like-minded musicians were gathered at two writers’ retreats. “There is an Irish word, ‘meitheal,’ that describes groups of people working together. I love that word,” she explains. “A lot of people come together to help here.”

Olan Monk, alongside Henry Earnest and Finn Carraher McDonald (who releases music as Nashpaints) are among those who helped push the album into new musical territory. Mixing on the album, meanwhile, was completed in New York by Gabriel Schuman, known for his work with MIKE and Bladee. Luster takes the atmospheric soundscapes Somerville was working with in the past and expands the boundaries with songs that cross over into dream pop and shoegaze territory. It is fitting that the album is being released on 4AD, home to spiritual forebears like the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil.

While working on the album Somerville also took on a position as NTS Radio’s resident early morning shift, broadcasting live twice a week from 7-9 a.m. local time. The Early Bird Show feels as much a part of Somerville’s work as her music. It is during these shows that she slowly ushers listeners into their days, playing an eclectic mix of folk, ambient, and dream pop to the bleary-eyed. Sometimes, in playlists filled with artists such as Broadcast, Ichiko Aioba, and Grouper, she drops her own music seamlessly.

Read on for Somerville’s thoughts on the role her hometown had on Luster and what exactly goes into curating music for the early morning shift.

The FADER: It’s been six years since your last album. What have been the significant shifts in your life during that period?

The main thing was that I left Dublin and moved back to Connemara in 2020. On my last album I was working mostly on my own and with one other collaborator. With this new album there was a lot more collaboration which led to more time making decisions and things like that.

I had a bit of a yearning for Connemara and a more holistic approach to making music. Before, when I would be in the city, it felt a bit like clocking in and clocking out. There is a much slower pace [where I am now]. I don’t take that for granted. There is a great community spirit, too, that I’d sort of lost connection with over the years.

Is that where the shift to working more collaboratively on your music come from?

It was that and the music I was drawn to making and listening to. There is a good crew of us in Ireland who are all working on each other’s projects. It becomes a sort of shared language in a way. That has been really nice. There are a lot of people in the smaller villages making great art. It’s a really good time to be making things here.

Has your relationship with your hometown changed as you have become older?

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, you know, when you’re a teenager, you just want to move on and get out, which is also important. I think I always appreciated the quiet in some way but my relationship [with Connemara] has definitely changed for that reason.

Do you see Connemara reflected in the new album at all?

It is more outward in its sound with much more spaciousness in the arrangements. I think, subconsciously, that’s down to where it was made. There is a subtlety to the landscapes here but it also changes and can be very wild, too. That has seeped into my music for sure.

Lyrically, there are a lot of natural themes popping up in your words, too. Things like lakes, gardens, water, and waves…

I am very much drawn to water, as my people are supposed to, it’s very healing. And time, too. The slowing down of things and my relationship with time. I write a lot about that on the album. I live right by the coast and I do like swimming. I’m wary of saying it too much because there is such a wave of people going cold water swimming. I do find getting in the water helps a lot, though. It just kind of resets everything.

There are the moon and the planets and the stars, too. “Réalt” is named after the Irish word for star.

Are you a big astrology person?

I’m actually not, but I love how the moon affects the water and the tides and all that. Who doesn’t love the moon?

I wanted to end by asking about your NTS show. You have talked a lot about stillness and slowing down of time. Has pulling that show together over the last few years changed your approach to making music as well?

Being exposed to so much different music and different tones probably seeps in in some way even if I can only write what comes naturally to me in those moments. Practically, the show has helped too. Being up at 6am to broadcast live is a real anchor. You can feel the seasons change from May through to November as you get up to be on air. I wouldn’t be up at that time for anything else. I started during the pandemic and it has become a real community thing over time. It was especially helpful at the beginning, when we were much more isolated.

What are the most important rules of playing music in the earliest hours of the morning?

I gravitate towards slow moving textures but it’s hard to say because some people are actually trying to get their day going at that time. I do hear from people asking me to pick it up a bit. Personally, I don’t want to hear anything like that, though. Keep it slow. That’s the perfect way to rise gently.