Review | Gwenno – Utopia

Label: Heavenly Records

By Ioan Hazell

To get a sense of the multifarious influences behind Gwenno Saunders’ music, you need only consider the geographical timeline of her life. From Wales, to Cornwall, to Las Vegas, to a few — formerly seedy, but these days predominantly hipster — areas of London, Gwenno seems always to have remained in motion, and along the way has the collected a wide gamut of sonic inspiration. 

Ever a champion of the Celtic languages she speaks, Gwenno’s previous albums, which include 2015’s ‘Y Dydd Olaf,’ 2018’s ‘Le Kov,’ and 2022’s ‘Tresor,’ have featured lyrics predominantly in Welsh and Cornish.

With her latest offering, ‘Utopia,’ Gwenno has transitioned to a primarily English language tracklist, including just a handful of Welsh-language songs. The reason for this transition, she explained, is that ‘Utopia,’ is an album ‘about that point where [she went] out into the world on [her] own’.

Much having happened in the time since her initial departure from Cardiff to Las Vegas, Gwenno said, “I needed 20 years just to make sense of things, and I realised that the starting point of my creative life isn’t Wales, it’s actually North America.”

Stylistically, and somewhat ironically considering the title, ‘Utopia,’ might be Gwenno’s most earthly sounding record to date. In contrast with the pulsing, synthesized landscape of ‘Y Dydd Olaf,’ the organic presence of a band is keenly felt throughout this album.

Her later records at times included similar arrangements, but in ‘Utopia,’ there is a newly synergistic flair—a sense of the band coming together into full maturity. It is worth noting though, that the dissociative-cool of her previous releases has not been altogether abandoned.

In ‘Y Gath,’ a personal favourite among the album’s Welsh tracks, a sing song melody, paired with a driving, country-and-western conjuring backing, recalls the sardonic nonchalance of Michelle Gurevich.

‘Utopia,’ seems to me an album concerned with life’s contradictions. There are songs about motherhood and nights out, migration and discovering family roots in places migrated to. “The title itself, in the original Greek, does not mean the ideal place, it means non-place,” says Gwenno.

Placelessness, though, in this album’s context, should not be taken as synonymous with things lost or adrift. Perhaps, in entering a non-place, Gwenno has allowed herself a certain flexibility, a freedom of identity which has made room for some of her most lucid and human compositions to date.