Tone Glow 182: Maria Somerville
An interview with the Irish musician about growing up near the sea, hearing stories from her father, and her new album 'Luster'
Maria Somerville
Maria Somerville is an Irish singer-songwriter who self-released her debut LP, All My People, in 2019. The album, which drew from traditional Irish folk themes, was a striking and intimate collection of dream pop that was only made with one other person—the sound engineer Brendan Jenkinson. Her sophomore album is titled Luster, and finds her collaborating with more artists, including Henry Earnest and Finn Carraher McDonald. The result is a more expansive collection of songs that stands as one of the best 4AD album in years, drawing a throughline from the early shoegaze and dream pop acts to various musicians from the past twenty years—from Grouper to Julianna Barwick, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma to Carla dal Forno, to all the Danish artists on Escho and 15 love. Luster is out on April 25th and can be purchased at the 4AD website and at Bandcamp. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Somerville on March 24th, 2025 via Zoom to discuss her new album, the importance of being in nature, and the stories she heard from her dad.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: How’s your day going?
Maria Somerville: It’s a really sunny day here in Dublin. You can really feel the start of spring. Where are you, Joshua?
I’m in Chicago. The past weeks have been this constant back and forth between cold and hot. We have a few “fake spring” moments. It snowed one day recently and it was super sunny the next.
Yeah, that happens here in April as well. Some years you can get ice and it’ll get really cold, but right now we’re in this spring, whether it’s a fake one or not.
I wanted to ask you about growing up in Connemara. What do you feel like you’re able to experience there that you can’t get anywhere else?
I suppose it’s always a personal experience with wherever it is you are. The community there is amazing. And then the landscape of course—being around that quiet, calm, and slow time is real nice. There are parts of the landscape that are really unique. You can drive a few miles up the road and it’ll be different—there will be more limestone terrain and then granite somewhere else, and then some green, luscious fields in the next spot with mountains and lakes and the sea and the coast. I suppose it was the quiet that allowed my imagination to grow.
How so? Are there specific memories you can pinpoint?
I was always singing because my father and that side of the family always sang. When I first started writing properly—because I did this sound course—I could really feel the place come through in “All My People.” That was kind of the first song I wrote—and that’s from my last album [All My People (2019)]—where I was looking out of the car where I’d been writing this and really feeling it.
You said you were always singing. What was it like growing up in the Somerville household?
They were always singing, and I suppose it still happens where songs get passed down—these folk songs and old Irish ballads. My uncle used to learn songs in his car. He used to have an old [Volkswagen] Golf and all these tapes and he’d just sit in the car outside and learn songs. It’s funny, I mostly learned songs from pub experiences because it was a lot more forgiving—we were able to watch the sessions and then they’d stand up and sing. Some of them, because it’s five brothers, they had these blood harmonies. That was my first experience of music and it was very powerful, just hearing these voices together. But I was always singing all the time.
Did singing come naturally for you?
Yeah, definitely. And I’m getting into a better routine of singing in that playful way, of just using your voice in different ways. I was singing in the car and in the house, and it was nice.
Does that mean you stopped singing in this “playful” manner at one point? I’m assuming this is like singing in an everyday context, which is separate from singing for a specific song you write.
I suppose it just goes through different stages; you meet people and have different experiences and anything you come away from—that you grow up with—you come back to. In the last few years, I’ve been coming back to that. When I was younger, it was playful but I also liked singing because you could sing through any situation, whether you were happy or sad. There were definitely moments where I was going through many emotions and I was using the voice to process. I guess it’s writing and singing, now, that will get me through a lot.
Do you remember the first song you wrote that helped you get through a particularly tough moment?
That’s a good question. “Up” is like that, but there’s quite a few of them on Luster (2025)—every song will get you through something. Even “Projections.” All of the songs have something in there.
How did you approach a song like that? I feel like the lyrics and the music are so intertwined.
Everything that was going on at the time was weighing on me. Usually I just start with the guitar, with chords. I started out with a different tuning, actually, and the first iteration was very different compared to where it got to. For the arrangement I worked with Henry Earnest and Finn aka Nashpaints to get it to where it was. I wanted to merge the arrangements and the instrumentation with the themes and the melodies. You definitely have to go inside yourself and find a meditative place to be present. Before, a lot of my process was engineering the vocals myself, and this time my friend was doing it. They were quite encouraging.
What did they do to make you feel at home?
One of them said, “We’re not looking for excellent! We’re just looking for—” (laughter). And it’s because I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. I felt very relaxed at that point.
Do you consider yourself a perfectionist?
Yeah, and if you put too much pressure on yourself it’s hard. But that’s with anything in life—if you’re holding on too tight for something to be a certain way, you won’t be so happy.
I feel like that’s even true with relationships and with what’s being talked about on “Projections.”
Yeah, exactly. So I guess it was good that Henry suggested that (laughter).
You mentioned this period of moving away from the music you grew up with. What formative artists were there for you as you were moving away from the things in your household, when you were venturing on your own?
Locally, in Ireland, there’s this artist named Katie Kim. She’s based in Dublin and makes great records, and I saw her perform with a loop pedal, which I hadn’t really seen before. She used it really well with her guitar and her voice. And then an artist called Patrick Gallagher. Then stuff like Grouper and My Bloody Valentine. I would’ve grown up with Sinéad O’Connor, but I also came back to her music after some time. These were gateways into other types of other music as well. Up until that point, I had only experienced more linear songs; I hadn’t seen people use their voice in that way, with the kind of layering. The melodic song structures, as well, where they weren’t following a verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure.
How do you feel like you’ve grown as a vocalist from your last album to this one? What sort of things did you push yourself to do?
I was exploring different techniques and recording with other people helped. The voice is more out front on this album than the last.
Is that because you’re more confident now or is it a stylistic decision?
I’m not sure if it’s about confidence—with All My People it was more of a stylistic choice to have the vocals more washed out, and it made more sense for the songs. Maybe “Halo” is a nod to the previous work, but it’s also what suits the song. There was a confidence in writing, though, and experimentation.
You have AutoTune at the end of “Spring.” How did you decide on that?
The melody was hanging around for a while and because my voice is so low in its range for that part of the song, we decided on this playfulness of the AutoTune come through. It seemed to fit.
Do you see a connection between the traditional singing you’ve done with your family to the way you sing with your own family?
It’s there in the storytelling spirit and some of the deliveries on “Trip,” but it is very different. It’s maybe more of a feeling.
Who are the important storytellers you’d had in your life?
That’s a good question. There’d be local people that’d you just kind of hear. There would be old stories about ancestors or from knowing the land so well. I suppose it’s not so much storytelling than passing down knowledge. My father had stories from his father when he was around, and there would be different things. Dad used to be a fisherman—just a smalltime one—around the lakes, and he has all this knowledge. Like, “If the rocks are shiny over on the south of the lake, that means rain is coming,” or “when the electricity wires are making a hum, that’s when rain is coming.” It’s all about rain (laughter). But then it’s even just certain things that you lose track of in the city, where he’ll know every tree, or he’ll say, “Oh, that’s a southeasterly wind coming in, which probably means there’s gonna be… sun.” (laughter). It’s all about the weather, man. I found it all fascinating and I was happy to pick up on all of it.
Did you often go fishing with your dad?
I’d spend time out on the boat, but I’d just like to go for the spin. We’d go to these islands and that was really nice.
Do you view your songwriting as a similar sort of storytelling practice, in the same way that your father and others did?
These songs are sort of just whatever comes out of me naturally—it’s intuition. Maybe it is, but I can’t say. I have works that didn’t make it on the album, but they’re more documentation—they’re field recordings. There’s more of an experimental approach, and maybe that’ll be a different project.
I wanted to talk about the song “Halo” because in that song you’re painting a portrait of this landscape, and you’re also talking about the sea and these mystical creatures. And that one even starts with field recordings, too.
That one was definitely about being there, and it came out quite naturally. It was definitely about the place, and it was probably around that time that I was receiving all this knowledge and feeling into it (laughs).
Do you feel really connected to nature?
It’s definitely very vital for me in order to get through things. I feel very calm in nature. When I moved back, one of the local people and my father showed me these walks that I’d never known about before. One is up this hill where people used to turn turf by hand and wheelbarrow; it feels very ancient and sacred. Only people who live there would know about it. There’s another place called “seanbhóthar” which means “the old road.” Being near water is always nice, too. The lakes and Glassilaun Beach.
There’s this artist Dorothy Cross and she had this line where she was quoting Joseph Beuys who said, “To be of it, to be in it, not to be looking at it.” She was saying that she doesn’t paint beautiful landscapes but that she wants to be in it, she wants to be in the bog. She uses things that are washed up, like shark skin. I feel that in some way. When I read that, I knew what she meant.
Does that mean your music could never replace the experiences you have in nature, or that you want your music to provide that same experience?
Oh, we’re coming back to the music (laughs). I was just talking about my experiences in the bog. But I suppose there’s the essence of that in there. I’d have to think about why that line speaks to me so much in relation to the music.
You mentioned the water—what do you like about water that you don’t get from just walking around on land?
I like being in the water because it’s a nice reset—it’s very cold in the Atlantic (laughter). I like the idea of the moon and the water and the tides—that kind of movement, that they’re connected. Thinking about that is a kind of meditation. I love the sound of the waves. That’s the nice thing about being outside; you can find music everywhere.
Was there anything we didn’t talk about today that you would like to mention?
The collaborators on the album are important.
What was significant about working with them? What do you think would not have been possible had they not been on the record? What would be missing? What would be different?
A lot, really. All My People was quite introverted in its approach and I recorded everything myself at home and worked with one person, Brendan Jenkinson, to finish it. This one, with the production and everything, there was a lot of trust with everyone. There ended up being different people on different songs. With songs like “Garden” and “Projections,” I could take things so far and then it was really nice to have different perspectives. It was nice to let go. I owe a lot to them.
Was it hard for you to let go?
Definitely, but when it works it’s so exciting. So it was there a little bit, but everyone there is a musician so they’re all giving a part of themselves—it was a nice process, and I was really grateful.
I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
Oh, that’s crazy (laughter). This is so hard because I’m Irish and self-deprecating (laughs and then pauses to think). This is impossible, I’ve made such a blank. There’s this word people use as a joke, where they say “notions,” like if I said something crazy people would say that I have notions. Umm… (takes a long pause). This is really hard, on the spot.
If you don’t have an answer, that’s okay.
That’s really sad though, isn’t it? Erin might have some answers (laughter). [Editor’s Note: Erin is the US Publicist for 4AD who sat in on the conversation]. I like my voice, even when I’m not singing, and no one can take it from me.
Since this was a difficult question to answer, what is it like to sing songs that are about your own experiences and involve being vulnerable? Is it similarly difficult, or is it easier because music provides a sort of distance?
It’s different. I always loved playing songs—the first feelings I ever had with being on stage was that I felt at home.
Maria Somerville’s Luster is out on April 25th via 4AD. The album can be purchased at the 4AD website and at Bandcamp.
Thank you for reading the 182nd issue of Tone Glow. No notions, please.
If you appreciate what we do, please consider donating via Ko-fi or becoming a Patreon patron. Tone Glow is dedicated to forever providing its content for free, but please know that all our writers are paid for the work they do. All donations will be used for paying writers, and if we get enough money, Tone Glow will be able to publish issues more frequently.