Which Way to Happy

Album review

In March 2020, Penelope Isles were midway through a North American tour in support of their 2019 debut, Until the Tide Creeps In, when they were forced off the road by the COVID-19 pandemic. The band's sibling co-leaders, Jack and Lily Wolter, took shelter together in a cottage in Cornwall, where they ended up writing a more anxious, melancholy second set of songs directly informed by the mental and physical challenges of the time. With production by Jack Wolter, strings added by composer Fiona Brice, and mixing by Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips), the resulting Which Way to Happy expands on and amplifies the debut's catchy, shoegaze-informed noise pop. It goes so far as to reach oversaturated, cinematic heights on songs like "Miss Moon" and the sinuous "Sailing Still." "Miss Moon" begins with acoustic guitar, strings, and twinkling keys before those instruments are inundated by a lumbering wall of sound including nearly unintelligible, deity-like vocals that plot a relocation to the moon. A third of the way in, the track breaks open into a bouncy dream pop fantasy that ends in feedback-laced guitar solos, grooving baselines, and cymbal-crashing shimmer. Back on the ground, "Terrified" is a musically ebullient nod to songs like the Cure's "Just Like Heaven," with lyrics that are incongruously overwhelmed by fear and doubt. Elsewhere, "Play It Cool" presents a classic-soul-infused noise pop led by the wispy-voiced Lily, who also sings lead on the giddy, racing "Have You Heard" ("...that Mercury's in retrograde? Maybe that's why"). They occasionally catch their breath in quieter moments such as the drum machine-accompanied "Iced Gems" and trippy "11 11," an epic Jack Wolter-led ballad rooted mainly in acoustic guitar and strings. No song is simple or spare from beginning to end, though, including the album's dramatic closer, "In a Cage." When Jack's voice enters its cosmic expanse -- which ranges from throbbing synth bass to bird calls -- after the two-minute mark, it's with a resigned "Lost inside a cage/I know I'll be here for a while." Outperforming what was an impressive debut, Which Way to Happy takes its immersive qualities to another level.

© Marcy Donelson /TiVo