It took six years, but Maria Somerville is finally back with another album, her first for the iconic 4AD. That is certainly a fitting home for Somerville, as Luster’s best moments favorably recall the label’s Ivo Watts-Russell golden age. In fact, the album description specifically (and aptly) invokes the lush romanticism of Ivo’s own shapeshifting This Mortal Coil project as a key reference point, but the resemblance is not exactly a stylistic one. Instead, Luster feels more like the kind of album that would have resulted if Julee Cruise had been backed by a revolving cast of ringers from classic 4AD acts like Cocteau Twins. I suppose Somerville’s greatest song (2019’s “Dreaming”) already evoked 4AD luminaries Tarnation quite beautifully, but Luster is considerably more “dreampop” in focus than its illustrious predecessor All My People.
While I do appreciate the many cool influences on display that one would rightfully expect from an artist with a long-running NTS show, Somerville’s greater allure lies in her knack for crafting absolutely gorgeous singles and Luster features quite an impressive run of them. For me, the heart of the album is the one-two punch of “Projections” and “Garden.” Notably, the two pieces are quite similar in a complementary way: the former beautifully marries sensuously breathy vocals with a slow-motion guitar chug and a killer chorus hook, while the latter ascends to dreampop heaven with a more muscular, bass-driven groove and a beautifully understated maelstrom of swooning shoegaze guitar magic.
There are also a couple of more eccentric pop detours lurking deeper into the album. My favorite is “Violet,” which masterfully combines a bouncy, static-gnawed drum machine groove with somnambulant yet spatially dynamic vocals and a killer unexpected crescendo of sculpted feedback snarl. Elsewhere, “Spring” weaves jangling and shuffling pop magic with woozy, billowing ambient shimmer and an autotuned final stretch that nods to the artier side of contemporary R&B. While hazy guitars, soft-focus synths, and reverb-swathed vocals admittedly often lead to diminishing returns for me in an album-sized dose, Luster happily features enough well-placed sharp textures and stylistic curveballs to mostly elude that trap and come across like an excellent and lovingly curated mixtape instead.
