Taken a technique, the songs on Luster are desolately lonely, beamed out into the bracing Connemara ether or directed in direction of a “you” that’s nowhere to be seen. “Projections of you/In my head,” she sings huskily on the refrain of “Projections”; on “Stonefly,” she repeats, “With out you…” like a mantra over synth swirls that harken again to “hypnagogic pop.” Sure lyrical motifs resurface repeatedly—the ocean, the sky, the trail. The phrase “time” seems extra incessantly than I can rely: On “Spring,” it is available in waves that ebb perpetually away, and on the breathtaking “Backyard,” she swims by time itself, previous darkish caves and out towards hotter waters. Is she swimming ahead in time, or again? A secret third route, she clarifies: “Into.”
And but Luster is the least insular of Somerville’s initiatives—maybe excluding final yr’s Princ€ss, the debut from the mysterious collective of the identical identify, of which Luster’s press notes reveal Somerville to be a contributor. (Looking back, it isn’t laborious to identify her fingerprints on songs like “Generally” and “In My Head.”) The place she recorded All My Individuals for essentially the most half alone, right here she collaborates with a handful of principally Irish musicians who match into the combination so subtly you barely register they’re there: the harpist Róisín Berkeley on the starry-eyed “Réalt,” guitar from Connemara native Olan Monk on “Stonefly,” uilleann pipes from Lankum’s Ian Lynch tucked into “Violet,” plus broader contributions from Henry Earnest and Finn Carraher McDonald. Maybe consequently, there’s a holisticism to the hero’s journey on which Somerville embarks—a sense that you just’re not alone, particularly when you find yourself.
At instances a lyric sheet is required to discern what Somerville is singing: The distinctly Grouper-esque “Halo” obscures a reverie of historic Irish mysticism with thick clouds of reverb. Written out, Luster’s lyrics can really feel just a little unresolved: “I can see/Extra clearly than I might earlier than/I do know now/What’s true/For me,” from “Journey,” is a sentiment so easy it verges on trite. However that’s precisely the attraction of “Violet,” on which Somerville channels Carla dal Forno’s goth-folk romance, singing within the woolly manner your voice sounds if you get up: “Burden of life/Life is love/Love is time/Time is love/So many issues within the air.” What could possibly be sophomoric merely registers as true, then dissipates earlier than the thought solidifies. “Every little thing is…” she sighs, however I can’t make out the remaining, as if she’d traced the ultimate phrase onto a steamy lavatory mirror. In any case, what issues is it’s spring, and wild strawberries are rising alongside the trail exterior her home.
