Over the last forty years, Gwenno Saunders has experienced a wide range of unconventional lifestyles. Raised in a socialist household in South Cardiff, with a Cornish poet as a father and a Welsh activist as a mother, Gwenno was brought up speaking three languages. Her parents, who were firmly against Anglo-American culture, made it a point to speak their marginalized mother tongues at home.
Her career began as a dancer in Las Vegas, followed by a brief acting role in a Welsh language soap opera, but her musical path took shape in the early 2000s when she represented Cornwall at the Liet International song contest, an alternative to Eurovision for minority languages. Her significant breakthrough occurred in 2005 when she became the lead singer of the indie-pop group The Pipettes. The band released two albums, toured internationally, and even performed on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in 2007. Gwenno departed from the group in 2010 and toured as a synth player for Elton John's band before releasing her first solo album, ‘Y Dydd Olaf,’ in 2014. After putting out three albums exclusively in Welsh and Cornish, her forthcoming fourth LP ‘Utopia’ marks her first project where most lyrics are in English. In her first interview since the record's announcement, Gwenno meets with CLASH at The Social, an iconic Central London venue owned by her label, Heavenly Recordings.
The venue's decor features a series of glamorous promotional images of Gwenno, shot by photographer Clare Marie Bailey during a recent trip to Las Vegas. Bailey will soon join Gwenno on stage for a Q&A session ahead of her intimate solo piano performance. Discussing her new record and her desire to explore beyond her distinctive identity, Gwenno tells CLASH, “We are all a mix of identities. As an artist, especially in today's digital world, it’s challenging because people like to box you into something that can be summed up in a soundbite, which is limiting.” She adds, “My favorite artists, like Bowie or Madonna, are always reinventing themselves and embodying different personas. That evolves from a genuine place, which I wanted to delve into with this record, since I’m not just a rural linguist wandering through a field. Creativity is a space of freedom and reinvention, and it’s vital not to confine oneself.”
Reinforcing this, she remarks, “As we age, we accept all the roles we've played and the perspectives we've held over the years. I’m not a language advocate; I just happened to have very unconventional parents who chose to speak Cornish in our small flat in South Cardiff. None of this has been a conscious choice, so when random events occur, it’s important to try and make sense of them.”
This ten-track album reflects Gwenno's contemplation of the past 25 years of her life. She shares that this led her to write most of the songs in English, as “You can’t convey a memory through translation, so I wanted to acknowledge parts of my life over the last twenty-five years that were in English, especially concerning places, people, and moments that no longer exist.”
This concept is evident in the album's title: ‘Utopia,’ inspired partly by a now-defunct techno club and the Ancient Greek meaning of the term, which translates to ‘non-place.’ Nonetheless, the album does include one Cornish song and several Welsh tracks, such as her latest single, ‘Y Gath.’ She laughs, saying, “I didn’t feel that the English language warranted a full album!”
From an early age, Gwenno trained in Irish dancing, which landed her first job at 17 in a Las Vegas production of Michael Flatley’s ‘Lord of the Dance.’ She humorously recalls, “My parents were very anti-capitalist, and my mother especially rejected Anglo-American culture, which is why I've always had a playful relationship with it. It's amusing that my first job as an Irish dancer was for an American capitalist who sent me to Las Vegas. I love that irony.”
Her experiences and observations of Las Vegas as a city are central themes she revisited while creating her new album. “I'm an urbanite. I’ve always lived in cities and never experienced rural living, even though Welsh and Cornish languages have historical ties to rurality. I’m fascinated by human creations and have tried to move away from the romanticization of rural life, which can be quite perilous and culturally limiting.”
She reflects, “I began considering Las Vegas, where I resided as a teen. I was drawn to it, as whenever I mention living in Vegas to anyone from North America, they often say, 'but that's not America! It's nothing like the rest of the country!' I found that notion intriguing because I thought… yes, it is! It perfectly encapsulates everything about the country, and your denial of it is part of the issue!”
Gwenno elaborates, “The dismiss
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For the last forty years, Gwenno Saunders has navigated a variety of unorthodox lives. Raised in a socialist environment in South