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7 PM – Doors
8 PM – Show
MARIA SOMERVILLE
By the time Irish musician Maria Somerville started writing Luster, her landmark label debut for4AD, she had lived away from her native Connemara for quite some time. Having grown upamongst the wild, mountainous terrain of Galway’s rural west coast, she later relocated to Dublin, where she patiently developed an atmospheric dream pop signature inspired by thelandscape of her youth – a spellbinding soundworld of gusting ambient electronics, etherealguitar strums, sparse percussion, and hushed lyrical vignettes. In 2019, this culminated in All My People, a self-released LP steeped in reverb, nostalgia and a yearning for home that wonpraise from discerning press and listeners alike.
It was upon returning to Connemara, in a house near where she was raised overlooking one ofthe country’s largest lakes, Lough Corrib, that work commenced on the songs that wouldeventually become Luster, an album that illuminates Somerville’s music anew, pushing itforward in both sound and spirit. Where All My People conveyed memories and melancholiclonging with misty slowcore balladry, these 12 tracks show us an artist who’s more assured inthe path her life has taken, and the person she’s become in the process. As she sings in ‘Trip’ –“I can see more clearly than I could before. I know now what’s true for me.”
Invigorated by her surroundings and emboldened by her community, Somerville found arenewed sense of creative energy upon returning to home soil. It provided “fertile ground”for free-flowing recording sessions in her small living room studio, where she stitched togetherdemos that were then fleshed out with friends and collaborators, and later mixed by therenowned New York-based engineer Gabriel Schuman. Contributors included producers J.
Colleran, Brendan Jenkinson and Diego Herrera, aka Suzanne Kraft, as well as Lankum’s Ian Lynch, whose uilleann pipe drones you can hear in ‘Violet’, and Margie Jean Lewis, whoseviolin bows reverberate through the ambient haze of ‘Flutter’. Sessions with musicians Henry Earnest and Finn Carraher McDonald (aka Nashpaints) helped “tie it all together”, whilecontributions from friends Roisin Berkley and Olan Monk enshrined the companionshipthey’ve shared since Somerville returned to Connemara.
Listeners have had a window into Somerville’s world every Monday and Tuesday morning since2021 via her beloved Early Bird Show on NTS Radio, where her dawn chorus selections rangefrom blissful ambient and shoegaze to traditional Irish folk songs. Since signing to 4AD thatsame year, Somerville has toured with her label mates Dry Cleaning, and released two coversfor the label’s 40th anniversary celebrations – taking on Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Kinky Love’ and Air Miami’s ‘Sea Bird’. With the release of Luster, she has signaled the arrival of a new era that willsee her play around the world in 2025 accompanied by a live band. Rest assured though, nomatter where Somerville goes, she’ll take a piece of home with her – a living, breathing,timeless essence you can sense in every note, as clear as the air by the Corrib.