By Tyler Ody
To celebrate the release of their new album Which Way To Happy, out now via Bella Union with the physical release following on 21st January, Penelope Isles have shared a video to current single and album highlight “Terrified”. The track is a reflection on anxiety set to a dreamy sunburst of psychedelic jangle-pop while the colourful video features frontman Jack Wolter getting the full clown makeover. Of the video Jack says: “We wanted to capture some kind of juxtaposition within the video for “Terrified”. The manic, hurried face-painting getting slapped on but with me singing almost bored and spun-out in real-time. A funny, supposed-to-be-joyful clown framed in a wonky black and white frame. The instrumentation of the song is very much the polar opposite to what I’m singing about and so we tried to continue this theme in the video. We also wanted something visually a little less busy and intense than the other videos we have shared from the album. Click HERE to watch.
“Jack and Lily Wolter balance the bitter and the sweet with real delicacy on the follow-up to their 2019 debut… An endearing mixture of emotional wobble and creative confidence, Which Way To Happy is on exactly the right track.” MOJO
“Festooned with macroscopic, reverb-smitten production and sumptuous orchestral arrangements, Which Way To Happy balances the raw confessionalism of its lyrics with the lavish ethereality of sound… A genuinely healing listen; an album to get cosy with while its music lovingly soaks your wounds.” DIY – 4 stars ****
“Widescreen, expansive stuff, given added scale by Dave Fridmann’s mix. ‘Rocking At The Bottom’ mixes jangle and shoegaze with a dose of the Bunnymen at their most grandiose, while ‘Play It Cool’ is irresistible retro-pop. The stately psych stroll of ‘Sailing Still’ and woozy glide of ‘Pink Lemonade’ are both dreamy high points.” Shindig – 4 stars ****
“This sibling duo’s forthcoming album Which Way to Happy builds further upon their explorations of sound, unbound to the constraints of style.
The result is a cohesive grab bag of influences ranging from The Smiths to Tame Impala.” Paste
“Cause for joy as winter looms… Which Way To Happy is sprawling and multi-coloured and really, really big, though ultimately hugely friendly – maybe like the creatures from Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are seen through an acid prism.” Backseat Mafia – 8.5/10
Penelope Isles have previously shared the tracks ‘Sailing Still’, ‘Iced Gems’ and ‘Sudoku’ from the album
Penelope Isles UK live dates:
Saturday 20th November - London - Shacklewell Arms
Wednesday 24th November – Bristol – Exchange
Thursday 25th November – Cambridge – Portland Arms
Friday 26th November – Manchester – Gullivers
Saturday 27th November – Chester – St. Marys
Friday 10th December – Brighton – Concorde 2
2022:
Monday 17th January – Kingston – Banquet (In store)
Tuesday 18th January – Bristol – Rough Trade (In-store)
Thursday 20th January – London – Rough Trade East (In-store)
Friday 21st January – Brighton – Resident Music (In store)
Saturday 22nd January – Guernsey – St. James
Monday 24th January – Totnes – Drift Records (In-store)
Tuesday 25th January – Guildford – The Boileroom
Wednesday 26th January – Cardiff – Clwb Ifor Bach
Thursday 27th January – Southsea – Pie & Vinyl (signing)
Thursday 27th January – Portsmouth – The Loft
Friday 28th January – Reading – Face Bar
Saturday 29th January – Nottingham – Bodega
Sunday 30th January – Leicester – The Musician
Tuesday 1st February – Birkenhead – Future Yard
Thursday 3rd February – Dublin – The Sound House
Friday 4th February – Galway – Roisin Dubh
Saturday 5th February – Limerick – Kasbah Social Club
Tuesday 8th February - Manchester - Low Four
Wednesday 9th February – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
Thursday 10th February – Bath – Moles
Friday 11th February – Exeter – Cavern
Saturday 12th February – Falmouth – The Cornish Bank
Wednesday 16th February – York – Fulford Arms
Thursday 17th February – Newcastle – Cluny 2
Friday 18th February – Glasgow – Hug & Pint
Sunday 20th February – Blackpool – Central Library
Tuesday 22nd February – Birmingham – Hare & Hounds
Wednesday 23rd February – London – Oslo
Thursday 24th February – St. Albans – The Horn
Friday 25th February – Ipswich – The Smokehouse
Saturday 26th February – Tunbridge Wells – Tunbridge Wells Forum
When you’re trying to make it through tough times, you need a little light to find your way. That light blazes brightly on the alchemical second album from Penelope Isles, an album forged amid emotional upheaval and band changes. Setting the uncertainties of twentysomething life to alt-rock and psychedelic songs brimming with life, colour and feeling, Which Way to Happy emerges as a luminous victory for Jack and Lily Wolter, the siblings whose bond holds the band tight at its core.
Produced by Jack and mixed by US alt-rock legend Dave Fridmann, the result is an intoxicating leap forward for the Brighton-based band, following the calling-card DIY smarts of their 2019 debut, Until the Tide Creeps In. Sometimes it swoons, sometimes it soars. Sometimes it says it’s OK to not be OK. Pitched between fertile coastal metaphors and winged melodies, intimate confessionals and expansive cosmic pop, it transforms “difficult second album” clichés into a thing of glorious contrasts: a second-album surge of up-close, heartfelt intimacies and expansive, experimental vision.
Warm and rippling recent single ‘Iced Gems’ is a sorrowed lament, played out over the gentlest of fluttery keyboards and experimental electronic sounds, while Lily’s ‘Sailing Still’ charts the life of a relationship to a slow-burn and sorrowed soundscape of dulcitones, cello, violin and more: building in increments to a climax of measured grandeur.
The album swerves into Mercury Rev and MGMT’s cosmic slipstream with ‘Miss Moon,’ a galloping centrepiece with an irresistible call to dream: “Hey, kids – look up!” Steering the album through further contrasts, ‘Have You Heard’ is a feelgood flurry of insistent, pulsing space-rock; ‘Pink Lemonade,’ meanwhile, is a song of sweet, sharp beauty, touching on fading childhood memories and lifted by Fiona Brice’s strings. ‘11 11’ hosts Lily’s most tender vocal yet: recorded in one take through tears, it finds Penelope Isles at their most exposed, with Brice’s strings weeping in sympathy. Finally, ‘In a Cage’ cogitates on confinement yet finds solace in field recordings of happy, high times – a judicious note of meditative reflection after a giddy ride.
More field recordings were made during a stay at a small cottage in Cornwall, where Penelope Isles began work on the album. With romantic heartache already in the air, things swiftly got worse: lockdown began, claustrophobia kicked in and emotions ran high. As Jack puts it, “We were there for about two or three months. It was a tiny cottage with four of us in and we all went a bit bonkers, and we drank far too much, and it spiralled a bit out of control. There were a lot of emotional evenings and realisations, which I think reflects in the songs.”
After Cornwall, the band redid many of the rhythm tracks, recorded a little in Brighton, then recorded more in Cornwall at their parents’ house. “It was,” says Jack, “a proper rollercoaster ride.”
The ride continued with Fridmann, whose recent credits include Isles’ favourites Mogwai’s No 1 album, As the Love Continues. As Lily puts it, the process of sending Fridmann a mix, receiving it back in the morning and then having five hours to make decisions on it resulted first in stress, then in something sublime. “He made everything so colourful. It was so refreshing to have that blast of energy from Dave – it’s like he framed our pictures.”
On its release, Until the Tide Creeps In received rave reviews from Q, DIY, The Line of Best Fit and many others, while finding champions in Steve Lamacq and Shaun Keaveny. Meanwhile, extensive touring saw the Isles develop into a formidable live force, with ‘Gnarbone’ emerging as a sure-fire show-stopper.
Now, the Isles have 11 more show-stoppers to add to the mix. At the album’s heart, the band’s core traits have never been stronger: the bond between the Wolters, a sensitivity towards complex feelings, a desire to celebrate life in all its facets and an ambitious reach combine to create an album that feels utterly, emphatically present on every front.