PENELOPE ISLES
Until The Tide Creeps In (Bella Union) Brighton quartet Penelope Isles – centred around the brother / sister duo of Jack and Lily Wolter - have never been particularly ‘cool’. Favouring pure melodies, and the classic, harmonyladen sensibilities of bands like The Thrills over the grungy riffs of many of their town’s fellow bands of note, it’s a viewpoint that’s made them hard to place in 2019. Yet, on their debut, shying away from any kind of pigeonholing is a trait that works in their favour; moving between the heady sonic embrace of early track ‘Round’, ‘Not Talking’’s fragile, swelling croon and the bigger, denser build of ‘Gnarbone’, it means the band can go wherever they like. What holds it all together, meanwhile, is this sense of something insular and emotional, of unashamedly bright melodies that throw you into the sunlight and make the darker moments even more striking. ‘Until The Tide Creeps In’ is a record totally out of step with any modern music scene, and all the more timeless and special for it. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Cut Your Hair’
NIGHT MOVES
JESCA HOOP Stonechild
Can You Really Find Me
(Memphis Industries)
(Domino)
It’s interesting to hear Jesca Hoop talk about stepping out of her comfort zone on this fifth full-length. After all, you wouldn’t think she had one. Instead of heading home to record as she used to, she instead made the considerably shorter trip to Bristol to cut ‘Stonechild’ with John Parish. The appeal should be obvious to anybody who’s heard what he’s done with Aldous Harding on her last couple of albums. He does a fine job here too, but truthfully, all of the triumphs here are Jesca’s own and a long time in the making. It means that there’s room for new, handsome flourishes, like the choir bursting forth on ‘Red White and Black’, or inviting new collaborators like Lucious, Rozi Plain and This Is the Kit to back her. The latter two come to the fore on the sumptuous ‘Outside of Eden’, a sharp deconstruction of the burgeoning reliance of children on smartphones. ‘Stonechild’ is an exercise in top-level songwriting, stately and intelligent. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Outside of Eden’
As Night Moves were in the process of putting together this third LP, singer John Pelant apparently mused, “wouldn’t it be great if we could make a record that sounded like it has a lot of singles on it?” You wonder if that’s where things began to go wrong, because at the heart of ‘Can You Really Find Me’’s difficulties is a marked lack of cohesion. Night Moves drift stylistically across these ten songs, meaning that we continually make jarring jumps like between tracks one (‘Mexico’, a slow-burning synthpop number) and three (‘Keep Me in Mind’, a lightweight alt-country cut). Later on, the pair briefly threaten to revive chillwave with ‘Coconut Grove’, before waferthin balladry (‘Angelina’), more glacial electropop (the title track). Running through is a sense of inertia, a sort of slow-paced rut that the pair never quite snap out of, with the possible exception of the satisfyingly panoramic ‘Ribboned Skies’. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Ribboned Skies’
Back to the
Drawing Board
With Penelope Isles
Q1: Where did you record the album?
Q2: What does an ‘Underwater Record Store’ look like?
Q3: What does the Garden in ‘Through The Garden’ look like?
72 DIYMAG.COM
Q4: What do you all do after the tide creeps in?