Gwenno – Utopia review

If life is ultimately all about perspective, so for Gwenno Saunders to describe her fourth album as effectively having the equivalence of a debut is a strange idea to partake of. This after all comes from an artist who by any yardstick has lived a life, from fleeing her native Cardiff for Las Vegas as a teenager to star in Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance to working with her sister Ani in the critically adored Pipettes, followed by of all things bar work and an eventual return to south Wales.

The context obviously is key, because whilst a sequence of releases up to 2022’s Tresor have she’s said been in her eyes “childhood records”, Utopia (Named after a Vegas techno club) instead leans in to material inspired by “‘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’.

Places and people dominate the landscape, from opener London 1757’s homage to the metaphorical and physical link between her adolescent self and the capital, to The Devil’s conjuring up of the man himself, now happily retired it seems in Brighton. Composed mostly on piano and sung mostly in English, the mood is one of sophisticated retro pop, with the exceptional Dancing On Volcanoes flickering most brightly. Crafted and full of ideas, Utopia could however still have used a little more of Gwenno’s inner child.

You can read a full review here.