Gwenno - Utopia

Gwenno Saunders speaks a new language on Utopia, her fourth solo album and the first predominantly in English. Spanning 25 years of life experience, it sifts through decades of reinvention: Las Vegas dancer at 16, Bollywood bit-part, indie pop cult star with The Pipettes, post-party Londoner, not to mention sometime pub cleaner. If earlier records like Y Dydd Olaf, Le Kov and Tresor pulled from the mythic and maternal, Utopia zeroes in on the chaotic in-between, when she wasn't yet a wife or mother, just Gwenno in flux. The techno of her Vegas years haunts 'Dancing On Volcanoes'; domesticity and dislocation circle 'St Ives New School' and '73'. Written mostly on piano and recorded live at home with longtime producer Rhys Edwards, it's a reckoning of memory, chaos and making sense of youth once it's long gone.