Lush airy floatiness abounds as the siblings from the hippest city in the UK make it a hat trick.
There is a floaty, gentle quality to this album. The vocals appear to understate yet fully capture the moment. Guitars colour with subtle voicings and then urgently rip your head off just in case you started to feel too comfortable. The drums, roll and flourish like the crashing waves of the Atlantic Coast, where these songs were conceived, crafted and birthed. Musical nuggets pepper the album, fleetingly recalling other memorable musical moments. Stories are told, and reflections made, the inventive lyricism and hooky, compelling melodies, along with a lightness of touch and airy positivity, suggest this could be a perfect soundtrack for a journey or a holiday by the sea.
Penelope Isles are siblings Jack and Lily Wolter. Originally from the Isle Of Man, the band’s adopted hometown is Brighton, on England’s south coast, often identified as the UK’s hippest city. The album was written on a month long surfing trip to Lagos in Portugal and then recorded live in the studio on the Isle of Lewis, off the northwest of Scotland, the idyllic location of the Black Bay Studio, a refurbished fish factory offering sprawling, inspiring coastal views. This new album is released on Brighton’s innovative label, Bella Union, (which incidentally has an excellent record store in the city centre) and, as the title suggests, is their third album and their first recorded as a trio, close friend Joe Taylor (Anna B Savage, Iona Zajac), joining on drums.
Opening with a prefabricated green nugget, Another Kind Of Love, we are cast back to Woolf and Clarissa Dalloway’s infatuations. What other kinds of love are possible, an open question that the song, of course, can’t resolve and yet the floaty, trippy vibe is established, and we feel that all questions are permissible. Guitars stay in the background, the bass gently pumps us forward; the vocal refrain keeps it light and heavy all at the same time. I Love You Robert Pattinson, propels us with Taylor’s rolling drums. Looking from an adult perspective to the childhood worship of actor Robert Pattinson, this track gains strength by including verses from both siblings, reinforcing the shared childhood experience. At the end, the tortured guitar strains to find or not find the key; off beat ‘Lush’ lushness abounds as Taylor lets go. Bloody lovely.
The record in part documents the siblings’ life in Brighton. In Bom-Bane’s, drifty, floatiness abounds as the singer, whilst in Portugal, observes the rich yogees or as the song puts it, ‘the lizard people’, whilst reminiscing about a quirky, and before this record, ‘hidden’ gem of a restaurant in Brighton. As the crackling, overdriven Nels Cline like guitar takes over, there’s a hint of chaos beneath the warmth and fuzziness. To continue the vibe, we’re in impossible Brighton territory with Birthdays, the Englishness of the band clear with the line, “Postman Mark talks about how he can’t wear his gloves/ Its a faff”. This song has a powerful, uplifting finale. “I’m moving in a pink light towards you/ Don’t forget me now” exemplifying how the compositions breathe and evolve and develop in unexpected directions. No one could accuse these guys of lacking imagination. To further prove this point, Embo is a very short, simple duet which has gone almost before it’s started. A brief, fleeting thought perhaps; no need to say more.
Pretty In Pixels recalls the Psychedelic Furs classic, updated for today’s digital age. Is this a critique of digital images and the curated images of people on the internet who look nothing like that in real life? Maybe, maybe not, but in any case it has a great chorus and vibe and enough ambiguity to let you make of it what you will. Moonwalker unleashes dramatic, swirling, graceful rock patterns and varying time signatures. Dream brother Jack takes the lead vocal on this one as off-beat rhythms and drum patterns prompt close examination of your footwear. On 2 minutes 43 seconds it appears Joe Walsh rocked up to add some tasteful slide work, or is that just me.
You Think You Got A Way With Dogs is a 2 minute track which feels like a bit of a throw away, something that they just needed to say. It’s a bit of a curiosity that the die-hard fans will be keen to analyse; the rest may hit skip. Thinking Seat brings us back to what we’ve grown to love on the album so far. Another early Jenny Lewis nugget, perhaps yet then it floats away with an intoxicating chorus and the line which the band used to pull them through particularly tough touring moments, “U.G.A.K.I”. Which of course, stands for You Guys Are Killing It! Who knew. Am I Going Through This On My Own reflectively brings proceedings to a close. Low-key, questioning, uncertainty. Maybe we’ll get some answers on “4”.
This record is a statement of lush, layered, floaty loveliness. It would be cheap shot to focus too much on the inclusion of You Think You Got A Way With Dogs. Half the White Album had tracks that many thought were fillers, yet almost sixty years later we love the idiosyncrasies and the insight they provided into the minds of the creators. Who knows whether we’ll still be listening to this album in as many years, yet it is artistically brave and honest to include tracks which feel a little out of kilter. There’s probably no need to argue about whether or not this is a great listen, and for those new to the Penny Isles, this record will likely prompt them to go back and explore their brief back catalogue. So all that remains is to lie back in your deck chair, breathe in the sea air and enjoy.
