Balance is overrated. Nothing is ever quite what it seems. 3, the third long player from Penelope Isles revels in moments where stability may not quite be within reach. Dreams are deferred, stains don’t always come out in the wash.
Wood blocks get bulldozed by bass in the opening seconds of ‘Another Kind of Love’ before finally settling on gentle, atmospheric guitar as Lily Wolter’s angelic voice takes over. Shimmering and shoe-gazey the song takes hold with Jack Wolter straddling various elements. Lyrically the song angles away from the obvious, “I’m here for the new dimension/ But did I mention?/I love the smell of diesel too/ Poetry and no tattoos”. Restlessness and weightlessness struggle with no clear winner in sight as they recount love that doesn’t fit within the traditional framework.
With guitar and drums crashing in, Lily’s voice takes over ‘I Loved You, Robert Pattison’ before sharing vocals with Jack as the song moves into higher gears with an electric guitar in the fore as drums join in an ode with a slight resemblance to The Who’s ‘Baba O’Reilly’. It’s just a three-note phrase, but the slashing guitar leads the song into the most unexpected places, looking backward while moving forward. The bombast floats away while Lily, takes on the past, “I faked a feint of who fighters/ Can’t believe that I would do that/ Think you’re really hot/Talking with your head all hollow, stumbling about”. Seems the past Pattison presages the future.
Gentleness informs ‘Bom-Banes’ with Lily recount her days waiting tables for “lizard people” and missing a birthday party at the Kemptown restaurant but making it back in time to play a gig. From its stripped back opening, electric guitar fills the later stages, like a show in full swing. Penelope Isles know how to make the most of a moment, fragmenting and fractalizing their sound.
In the two verses of ‘Embo’ they can crystalise a love letter to the sea front flat at Embassy Court, highlighting the memories of folks staying there. ‘Pretty in Pixel’ moves quickly from thoughts of Psychedelic Furs to dreampop and beyond. Taking the lead on ‘Moonwalker’, Jack’s guitar frames lunar madness while portraying the need to escape the earth’s destruction, “We’ll fly away/While the world decays”.
Touring, the bane of many a band goes five ways at once while in the ‘Thinking Seat’. Semi-stream of conscious, it takes on the thoughts that creep in while driving from one gig to the next. The chorus is lovely even as it underlines the trauma, “Get out, get out, get it all out of my head,” while adding the phrase that signifies the love and hate of the road, U.G.A.K.I. (you guys are killing it). Such is life on the road. And such is life as a band struggles with the current state of the music business even as they struggle to find a parking space.
Brother and sister, on the road and off, ‘Am I Going Through This On My Own’, set to a fluttering synth, guitar and drum machine, questions just that. Yet reassuring vocals from Jack eventually make it clear that nothing could be further from the truth. Though the path can make on weary, at the end of the day Penelope Isles find themselves intertwined on 3. Thoughts and dreams collide and reconfigure as the Wolters face off against everything from finding love to finding any parking space. It’s a world worth traveling, especially with the Penelope Isles as the wheel.