Gwenno Broadcasts New Album 'Utopia', Shares New Single 'Dancing on Volcanoes'

Gwenno has introduced a brand new album referred to as Utopia, which can be launched on July 11 through Heavenly. The follow-up to 2022’s Mercury Prize-nominated Tresor was produced by longtime collaborator Rhys Edwards and options contributions from Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline. It’s led by the mesmerizing ‘Dancing on Volcanoes’, which blurs the road between catharsis and nostalgia. Test it out and discover the album cowl and tracklist under.

Reflecting on the lead single, Gwenno mentioned: “Jarvis Cocker dancing alone on stage, surrounded by dry ice, completely conveying the lack of our congregational dancing and ingesting in small venues with a slight swing of the hip and flick of a hand… dancing ’til 5am at Le Mandela restaurant in Grangetown, Cardiff… the Pet Store Boys’ completely aimed observations on fashionable life… the spirit of Johnny Marr on guitar, his echoes of the Celtic sea handed down by way of the generations… the necessity to dance as a cathartic act… it’s all right here – Dancing on Volcanoes!”

After releasing three albums in Welsh and Cornish, Utopia marks Gwenno’s first album recorded predominantly in English. “I really feel as if I’ve written a debut report, as a result of it’s a special language and it’s a special a part of my life,” Gwenno defined. “It’s about that time the place I am going out into the world alone, which individuals typically write about first, after which get on with their lives. However it’s taken me so lengthy to digest it — I wanted 20 years simply to make sense of issues, and I noticed the start line of my inventive life isn’t Wales, it’s really North America.”

“I believe the best way I’ve managed to write down in English is by acknowledging that I can’t translate loads of recollections,” she added. “I’ve discovered that concept actually necessary to discover. I believe if I’d simply stayed in Wales, and I hadn’t lived anyplace else or skilled another tradition then it could be actually totally different. I might’ve made information in Welsh, however I left dwelling at 16.”