Penelope Scott - Girl’s Night / Mysteries For Rats

There’s a logical reasoning for ‘Mysteries for Rats’ and ‘Girl’s Night’ arriving as two separate but simultaneous EPs rather than one full album. The former, a largely electronic selection (in the most lo-fi, bedroom synth way); the latter based in guitars and piano, there’s a fairly neat sonic split down the middle. What that doesn’t account for, however, is the totally inimitable voice, pacing and witty lyrical style of Penelope Scott herself. Whether she’s evoking pissed-off vaudevillian high drama on ‘Cabaret’, hyperpop-adjacent romantic malaise on ‘Gross’, or Moldy Peaches-esque, rough-around-the-edges folk on ‘Pseudophed’, Scott’s densely packed, stream-of-consciousness writing style knits it all together regardless.

The aforementioned ‘Cabaret’ is the collection’s meta centrepiece: a dissection of a clearly-unwanted comment on her music, spun out into an increasingly fraught conversation with herself (“My shit all sounds the same to you, I bet it fucking does…”). We’d take that sentiment and switch it up; Penelope Scott’s shit sounds like herself and literally nothing else around right now - and that’s a glorious thing.