Description
Label Review.
2019 album also available on CD.
Our Overview.
‘Until the Tide Creeps In’ is the sublime, guitar driven, indie pop debut release from Brighton, UK based foursome Penelope Isles. The band features songwriter siblings Jack and Lily Wolter who hail from the Isle of Man and completed by Jack Sowton and Becky Redford. The quartet have created an album that is quite simply “…a dreamy but biting piece of guitar pop…soaring, pastoral, highly intelligent songwriting.” As reviewed by Clash Music.
Formed around the chemistry between siblings and dual songwriters Jack and Lily Wolter, ‘Until the Tide Creeps In’ is an album deepened by shared experience. Born in Devon and raised on the Isle of Man, the Wolters’ bonds were strengthened by separation when Jack moved away to study art at university at 19, when Lily was 13. As he puts it, wryly, “By the time I moved home Lily was not so much of an annoying younger sister anymore and had grown up and started playing in bands and writing songs. We soon became very close. I had written some songs, so we started a band called Your Gold Teeth. We toured a bit and then Lily left for Brighton to study songwriting. A couple of years later I moved down and we started Penelope Isles together.” For every sibling band forged in rivalry, many others mount an unassailable genetic argument for keeping the music in the family. Jack added: "It's cool to have two songwriters in the band because I love her songs so much!"
Crisp and woozy, blissful and biting, ‘Until the Tide Creeps’ In is an album deepened by shared experience: experiences of, in Jack’s words, “leaving home, moving away, dealing with transitions in life and growing up. We are six years apart, so we had a different experience of some of this, but we share a similar inspiration when writing music.”
Double LP on pink vinyl with digital download code.
“Sweltering guitars scorch the earth [on “Chlorine”]… While summery synths and keys frolic in spaces left between the drum line and spiraling vocals, the riff phrases communicate nearly as much warmth and meaning as the lyrics do.” Stereogum
“There is a grandeur to their songs, big and swelling, ebbs and flows…The whole band is seriously talented, and…seriously rock, too.” Brooklyn Vegan
“Choppy guitar and thumping percussion combine to create a markedly DIY aesthetic throughout the video’s three minutes and five seconds of scrapbooked collage visuals. Said DIY aesthetic, both sonically as well as visually, operates as a self-aware style, one that brings an element of dirty garage rock to the haze of dream-pop flushes.” Paste