Gwenno’s second album, Le Kov, is Cornish for “the place of memory.” This title couldn’t be more appropriate for this album which, outside of crafting a slightly haunting throwback musical vibe, is using a nearly-dead language to tell us about the past. While Gwenno’s first album Y Dydd Olaf, was sung in her first two native languages, Welsh and Cornish, she decided to use her second album to create a kind of record of the Cornish language alone. Gwenno, a former member of the pop group The Pipettes, is one of about 300 living native Cornish speakers, and this album proves to be a thoughtful and loving documentation of her language and what you can do with it.
The majority of the album’s ten tracks reach over four minutes in length, and there is a focus on prominent instrumentation and repeated phrases (or just vocalizations, as in the first song). This is a shrewd move by Gwenno, because it makes the music not only beautiful, of course, but much more accessible to the very large audience of non-Cornish listeners. The lush sound of the music around her lyrics helps to then make these lyrics almost understandable to us. This gives the listener the option: you can try to search for translations of the lyrics and to parse meaning from them, or you can just let the language barrier exist without impeding your ability to enjoy the music. I came across a translation of a track, “Eus Keus?” to find that it’s basically a ditty about cheese. I adore cheese, but this instance illustrates that for this album, I don’t believe that the lyrics are literally important. I think Gwenno knows that most of her audience will not be translating these words, and so has strived to craft an atmosphere that evokes what “the place of memory” might sound like.
Primarily, that sound is one of love and appreciation. Even though each song sounds familiar to a pop listener – there are many that have a kind of bouncy, jaunty rhythm – Gwenno sings the lyrics with an extra level of care, and maybe a dash of pride that she can speak what is to many a fairly mysterious language. The album is also full of techo-dream-pop touches, with many songs taking their time to wrap us up and carry us away into their orbit. The first track “Hi a Skoellyas Liv a Dhagrow” especially sounds like something that could have come from a 1970s Euro B-picture (in the best way). Most of the songs carry that thread along, which creates a soundscape that altogether helps to create a head space that exists outside of our present time. It’s pop music, because there are repeated phrases and beats you can dig into and jam out to, but it’s not like 2018 pop music.
Because we don’t understand the words, and because of its great atmosphere, this album becomes a potentially great “mood” album, kind of New Age-y in its use of music that is alluring but simultaneously “background.” It isn’t a slow listening experience, however, as most of the songs stacked at the front and back ends of the album move into one another quite easily. It does drag a bit for just two songs, “Jynn-amontya” and “Den Heb Taves,” coincidentally the two longest tracks, but those songs still have some charm in their very dreamlike nature and the use of jaunty and layered instrumentation, respectively.
Le Kov is worth exploring, not just because of the rarity of the Cornish language, but because it builds a sound that is somehow familiar to us, and is evocative of our own pasts and memories without being related to us at all.
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