Gwenno: 2016

Although she’s only in her mid-thirties, Welsh singer and songwriter Gwenno Saunders has had a fascinating life. She was a professional Irish dancer as a teenager, even traveling from Wales to Las Vegas to dance in a Michael Flatley show. By her twenties, the Cardiff-born Gwenno was singing in the British pop group The Pipettes. After she left the group in 2010, she even traveled as Elton John’s synth player for a tour.

 

But Gwenno’s most powerful chapter is her work as a solo artist, singing in her native Welsh and Cornish. Her 2014 album, Y Dydd Olaf, was originally self-released via the Peski label. Gwenno didn’t think it would get much attention or traction. But the album did and it was rereleased in the summer of 2015 through Heavenly Recordings and finally came out in the States this spring.

 

Over that two year journey, Gwenno has won two prestigious Welsh music prizes, and has vaulted to major festival stages too, like Glastonbury, SXSW, and Festival No. 6. In the fall of 2015 Gwenno also gave birth to her first child and on the road, she relishes traveling as a tight family unit with her son and husband, producer Rhys Edwards.

 

Y Dydd Olaf, produced by Edwards, is a beautiful contradiction—a dystopian concept album, based on an obscure Welsh science fiction novel, but filled with bright hooks and gorgeous melodies. Gwenno’s adroit balance of synthpop, politics, and Welsh lyricism comes naturally as she discussed on this edition of FUV Live.

 

[recorded: 5/17/16]