Penelope Isles - 3 Penelope Isles

Penelope Isles returns.

After a brief disappearance into solo records and restless touring, Wolter siblings Jack and Lily resurface with 3: a record drenched in salt and sun, with the tide pulling at its edges.

Three years have gone by since the band’s last show. Somewhere in between, life happened. Lily spent six months in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, trading songs for surfboards and stepping back from music for the first time in years. When Jack went out on the road with CMAT, Lily started a band of her own. ‘3’ is the sound of this magnetic songwriting duo finding each other again.

Written on a monthlong surf trip to Lagos, Portugal, these are songs with sandy feet and sunburnt shoulders, hooks that glow and harmonies that ache. Beauty built carefully, like a perfect sandcastle on a summer holiday, only to be flattened in an instant by your auntie’s passing cruelty. There's sweetness here, but it comes with teeth.

A year later, the band flew to the Isle of Lewis off Scotland’s northwest coast to record the album live at Black Bay Studio. Perched on a sheltered harbour, twenty miles from the nearest shop, the refurbished fish factory was the first room the band had ever recorded in outside their home studio.  Engineers Pete and Cal, truly dedicated to the island they live on, held the room for ten days, offering the kind of generous, unhurried attention that lets a record breathe. The remote landscape pulled the Isles into new, thrilling territory. They kept binoculars close by, peering through the soaring live-room window to scan the sprawling coastal view for white eagles and dolphins.

3 is record of firsts for the Brighton-based band. The first as a true three-piece, with close friend Joe Taylor (Anna B Savage, Iona Zajac) joining on drums, and the first they’ve ever recorded live. Jack and Lily trade shimmering guitars and sunlit harmonies like shared secrets, while Joe Taylor anchors it all: falsetto drifting wistfully above, drums crashing below. These are songs that read like postcards or pages ripped from a diary and slipped under someone's door. Recording the album live has kept the ink wet and the page still warm.

Dinked 421

• ‘Hot Wings’ red & blue vinyl *

• Signed & hand-numbered postcard *

• Bumper sticker *

• Air-freshener *

• Gatefold sleeve & printed inner sleeve

• Limited pressing of 400 *
  
  

*EXCLUSIVE to Dinked Edition