Gwenno’s songwriting matures compellingly on Utopia

The fact that seven out of Utopia’s 10 tracks are sung in English may come as a bit of a surprise development. Although the change of language may well have commercial implications (it can’t hurt to have the words easily understood by a significantly higher percentage of the population, especially as Saunders’ lyrics dazzle equally in majority and minority languages), there are genuine creative or perhaps thematic reasons for the swap in dominant songwriting language.

Whereas 2022’s Tresor, 2018’s Le Kov (which was credited for sparking a revived interest in Cornish language) and 2014’s debut Y Dodd Olaf drew inspiration from fragmented childhood memories and settings, which were inevitably marinaded and as such best expressed in the languages that surrounded Saunders as a child, Utopia finds the focus shift to (predominantly early) adulthood.

The colourful journey Saunders has been on guarantees there are scarce indicators of standard-issue staid maturity responsibilities here. Having left home as a teenager to take on a role as a dancer in a production of Lord of the Dance in Las Vegas, Saunders returned to the UK (more specifically London) to dabble in cross-pollination of electronic and Celtic music, assorted dance productions, plentiful late nights partying and working in bars, eventually joining the acclaimed Brighton-based band The Pipettes, before moving to Cardiff and embarking on the ongoing solo career. The dreamily yet propulsively drifting title track (imagine a cross between early Goldfrapp and Jane Weaver’s motorik psych-pop) treks back to a techno club Saunders and fellow dancers frequented, messily, in Las Vegas, while the sprightly bouncing “Dancing on Volcanoes” (driven by a skittish groove that nods towards glory days of early 80s indie while remaining rooted in the here and now) packs the unmistakable whiff of cigarette ends, spilt beer, regret and wary hope of a very late one in the kind of bar that never seems to close.

Elsewhere, the instantly arresting “73” ("I came here for the poets and settled for the thieves") and the slinky, stop-start stutter of “The Devil” demonstrate Saunders’s assertation that the word ‘utopia’ means ‘no-place’ rather than an ideal place in the original Greek. Whilst the former is inspired by Saunders’s discovery of her family’s surprising connection to Dalston, which in itself is a setting to the early noughties memories fuelling some of Utopia, these (and the rest of Utopia) are songs that feel tantalisingly and really quite brilliantly caught between the factual lived reality and some sort of a distorted imaginary twist of it: is the latter song about the literal devil, or a more mundane personification of a devil fond of lies, empty promises and manipulation? Who knows, and it’s in these tantalising grey areas that Utopia really shines.