Penelope Isles

★★★

Which Way To Happy BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP

Content providers: Brighton siblings seek answers on second LP.

Wistfulness and melancholia are hardly alien states in pop music, but Jack and Lily Wolter balance the bitter and the sweet with real delicacy on the follow-up to their 2019 debut Until The Tide Creeps In.

Mixed by Dave Fridmann,

Which Way To Happy sometimes comes with the cosmic boom of The Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev (Have You Heard; Miss Moon) but a music-box intricacy keeps these anxious, wondering songs on a roomsized scale even as they worry at the big issues over strings and keyboards. “Throw me a rope down here,” sings Lily on 11 11, “Are there pills for how I feel?”, while both MGMT and Tanya Donelly would be pleased with Play It Cool. An endearing mixture of emotional wobble and creative confidence, Which

Way To Happy is – artistically, anyway – on exactly the right track. Victoria Segal