Gwenno has shared ‘War‘, the haunting second track to be taken from her forthcoming trilingual fourth album Utopia. ‘War‘ picks up a poem written by Welsh artist and poet Edrica Huws (Vingt-Et-Un) around the start of WWII and reimagines it inside a deep and hypnotic piece of dub heavy piano music. As ever, Gwenno’s vision is masterful, jumping Huws’ poem 80 years into the future to sit right at the heart of the daily chaos of the 21st century we’re living through. As the mesmeric track flows on, Huws’ words sound as perceptive today as they would have done when they were written. The track comes accompanied by a hypnotic black and white video featuring cinematography by Claire Marie Bailey. Watch here.
Commenting on the track Gwenno says: “I’ve loved this Edrica Huws poem for a really long time. She was an artist and poet, and she wrote this at the start of the Second World War. It kept resonating with me over this period where we’ve really normalised the idea of war, and actually at times have perhaps been quite enthusiastic from our sofas. I think her poem is really worth something in an age where we’re obviously tumbling towards something catastrophic. Those words have really reminded me of that very small window you have before it happens — the chance to be considerate, and more vigilant, and aware. It’s the elegance of her writing, the calmness of her writing, the wisdom.”
Additionally, Gwenno has announced news of a UK tour in the Autumn as well as a week of in-store appearances around the release of the album. For the instore shows Gwenno will play a solo piano set that previews material from her upcoming trilingual album Utopia – an album of discovery that documents the years between being “someone’s daughter, someone’s wife and someone’s mother”. Those songs will be joined on the day by a few handpicked tracks from her previous releases Y Dydd Olaf, Le Kov and Tresor. All upcoming dates are listed below.
Gwenno UK live dates:
Sunday 4th May – Salford – Sounds From The Other City
Thursday 19th June – Cornwall – The Lost Gardens
Thursday 26th June – Glastonbury Festival, The Tree Stage (piano set)
Wednesday 2nd July – Cardiff – Blackweir Park (with Alanis Morisette)
Saturday 16th August – Crickhowell – Green Man Festival
Saturday 12th July – Leeds – Jumbo Leeds
Sunday 13th July – Liverpool – Rough Trade
Monday 14th July – Bristol – Rough Trade
Tuesday 15th July – Cardiff – Spillers
Wednesday 16th July – London – Rough Trade Denmark street
Thursday 17th July – Brighton – Resident Brighton
Wednesday 29th October – Exeter – Phoenix, Exeter
Friday 31st October London – EartH
Saturday 1st November – Manchester – The White Hotel
Monday 3rd November – Leeds – Belgrave Music Hall
Tuesday 4th November – Glasgow – Nice n Sleazy
Saturday 8th November – Blackpool – Bootleg Social
Tuesday 11th November – Cardiff – New Theatre
Saturday 15th November – Falmouth – Princess Pavilion
43 years into her life, Gwenno Saunders has been many people. The disaffected Cardiff schoolgirl; the teenage Las Vegas dancer; the singer in indie pop group The Pipettes. There was a turn in a Bollywood film, a nightclub tour, a stint cleaning floors in an East London pub. Long before she would become an acclaimed solo songwriter in both Welsh and Cornish, a winner of the Welsh Music Prize, a nominee for the Mercury, a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh, there were the days of Nevada, London, Brighton; of Irish dancing, techno clubs, messiness and chaos.
Utopia, Saunders’ fourth solo album, is an extraordinary exploration of all of these selves. If the singer regards her first three solo records — 2014’s Y Dydd Olaf, 2018’s Le Kov and 2022’s Tresor as “childhood records”, rooted in her upbringing, her parents, her formative identity, then Utopia captures a time of self-determination and experimentation. These are songs of discovery, of the years between being someone’s daughter and becoming someone’s wife and someone’s mother. They range from floor-fillers to piano ballads, via contributions from Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline, and encompass William Blake, a favourite Edrica Huws poem, and the Number 73 bus.
There is a sense of revelation to Utopia, a feeling markedly different to that of previous records. Having released three albums in Welsh and Cornish, Utopia is Gwenno’s first album recorded predominantly in English, and presents a very different side to her life and songwriting.
“I feel as if I’ve written a debut record, because it’s a different language and it’s a different part of my life,” she says. “It’s about that point where I go out into the world on my own, which people generally write about first, and then get on with their lives. But it’s taken me so long to digest it — I needed 20 years just to make sense of things, and I realised the starting point of my creative life isn’t Wales, it’s actually North America.”
