Until The Tide Creeps In

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As well as being siblings, Jack and Lily Wolter are also the voice and pen behind Penelope Isles, the 4 man squad from Brighton. Until the Tides Creep In is the band’s ten track debut album, demonstrating a jack-of-all-trades approach to music: there’s the haziest psychedelic dream-pop on Chlorine, some emotive soft-rock on Three and rocking riffs on the hard-hitting Leipzig. But it would be all too easy to just list the songs on the album and enumerate each of their approximate styles and leave it at that. Although the influences are as obvious as they are diverse, the sum of its parts is entirely unique, be it Lily’s shrouded tone of voice, or the balancing act between childlike lullaby and teenage rebellion. Not Talking exemplifies this dichotomy: the slow triple-time ballad is laced with howling fuzzy guitars and hypnotizing bells. Until the Tides Creep In is the sound of a band who have accepted the price of wearing so many influences on your sleeve . Their refusal to compromise is absolute: dissonance at the heart of the songs as well as the record is carried with pride, lending momentum and strength to wall-of-sound moments, where the quartet is most unified – such as on Cut Your Hair. The penultimate track on the album combines chamber-pop vocals and gritty guitars in the style of Grizzly Bear, then drowns Wolter’s voice in a sonic hurricane. The noisy, saturated processing on the drums is conducive to explosive breaks à la Tame Impala (whose influence is everywhere on the album), contributing to make this one of the best tracks on the record. For many bands, a debut album is a way to spell "artistic identity, style, execution and image". Jack and Lily Wolter are at the opposite of this calculated approach; comforting melancholy is the very heart of their music and everything else is simply a contribution to that feeling. Simply put: Penelope Isles’ music isn’t so much dream-pop as it is dream-music – styles be damned. © Alexis Renaudat/Qobuz