PENS

DIY music is dangerous. It’s many other things but danger is what it does best. Of course, when I say danger I don’t actually mean anything particularly dangerous. It’s not about dicing with death or anything untoward and life threatening. Danger in musical terms is less exploring uncharted territory and more revisiting overworked formats and blueprints. It’s about displaying the portentous capacity to self-destruct. Unfortunately there is rarely anything dangerous to the music, it’s the same chords to the same distorted sprechgesang that one would expect from any laconic hipster. It’s the kind of danger that were an everyman to witness such a term being used in this way they would scoff into their double-bagged glucose riddled Yorkshire brew, as would the connoisseur, albeit into a herbal infusion as a change. On both accounts, the Danger in DIY µzak is disingenuous on grounds of pretension.

On High In The Cinema, Pens have the audacity to adopt such pretension, “Yeah we’ve got no money and we’re going to break in”. It’s a stupid, self deprecating, naive lyric but it transforms these pretentious arty kids into pathetic public school teenagers trying to be dangerous. They capture the faux-danger that continues to undermine rocknroll. Which is about as dangerous as it gets.

So lets book a compere, don our glad rags, put on a spread, and officially inaugurate PENS into the protogrrrl (©Bricolagemusic) club. Joining the ranks of Finally Punk, Eagle and Talon, maybe Jemina Pearl and probably Mika Miko. They alsobecome the first non-Americans to join the club (so long as you don’t include Afrirampo).