April was a crazy good month for releases in 2025. I was busy reviewing three other albums that made our THE NOISE OF column and exploring a handful of others from that list, not to mention whatever else was on my radar at that time. So, regrettably, I was not able to give words to Luster by Maria Somerville, and I have planned to make up for that mistake since. This album grew on me, though I enjoyed it immediately, and remains among my favorite and most listened to albums of 2025.
Luster begins with twinkles of guitar and field recordings of birds, and in those first few seconds, one can find a microcosm of the feel of Maria Somerville’s eloquent balance of sounds that feel rooted in the natural world with otherworldly dream pop. “Projections” carries the listener through slow acoustic strums and a low, clear bass line that gives weight to much of Luster, as echoes and reverb fill in the gaps applied to Somerville’s voice and electric guitars. The way these elements are layered bleeds into “Garden” fully embracing a sound that is reminiscent of The Cure’s masterpiece album, Disintegration.
Her vocal melodies are sweet and plaintive in turn, further echoing The Cure, but without Robert Smith’s yawp. “Corrib” feels more like a traditional Irish ballad, gently poetic and reflective. In fact, Luster, recorded in Somerville’s hometown of Connemara in County Galway, Ireland, feels romantically connected to the land and spirit of Ireland. No, there are no tin whistles or the like. This is still very shoegaze/dream pop, but the haunting echoes of emerald green, gray fogs, and blue ocean flow through each track, the way This Mortal Coil managed to make sounds simultaneously gorgeous and eerie.
This makes even more sense when you learn that Luster was released on 4AD, the label that forged This Mortal Coil as well as hosting foundational and contemporary alternative, indie, goth, and dream pop acts like Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Camera Obscura, Lush, and Erika de Casier. Listen to the ambient music and vocal weirdness of “Flutter”, and try to imagine it on any other label.
This merger of goth-tinged dream-pop and Somerville’s connection to Galway are addictive. The music and songs themselves have lingered and begged for repeat playthroughs of Luster for most of the year, but recently they have taken a new perspective for me. I recently watched John Huston’s film adaptation of James Joyce’s classic short fiction, The Dead. Anjelica Huston, playing Gretta Conroy, gives a stunning performance as she hears a song through the walls while preparing to leave the party that occupies most of the story. The song reminds her of a lost love in her home, also in Galway. Without spoilers, this incident leads us to the main conflict and eventual, breathtaking end of the story, but one could imagine Somerville’s music being that kind of catalyst, at once dense and hushed as if heard through walls, but ever tugging on heartstrings of faded memories and tender longings.
Perhaps this is why Luster has stuck with me for most of the year. The thick walls of beautiful vocals and expertly mixed instruments feel more like dream logic than songs sometimes. Luster’s closing track “October Moon” is a standout example of this. All too often dream pop settles into the same kind of background mediocrity that makes any genre sound self-similar, either echoing Jullee Cruise a little too closely or relying on shoegaze guitars to betray the vocals, but Maria Somerville has truly created a tapestry of sounds that reward each listen with new, sublime details. Luster is an experience to behold.