It's now clear that in the year 2009, album art does not matter anymore. Come on, they didn't even try on this one! It looks like it was drawn while they were in their tour van on a rocky road. It took me nearly a minute to understand that that is in fact a cassette tape on the far left. Remember when I classified Frat Dad as "childish garage rock"? Well, that's now an understatement because PENS think it's cool to misspell nearly all of their song titles too.
But moving away from that, the songs. Well the songs aren't any less childish than PENS' entire aura. Although most of the lyrics consist of "AAAAAAAAAAAAAH" we can give PENS some credit for having catchy songs. Being only a keyboardist/guitarist, a vocalist and a drummer, they offer some simplistic melodies that could stay in your head for the next hour or two. The only problem is that this is lo-fi. The sound doesn't bother my ears; it just brings up the question "What if they weren't lo-fi?" They would probably be considered a "terrible band" but we don't think that on first listen because distortion is cool.
With the album being less than 30 minutes, I guess it's alright for PENS' standards because it's not too painstaking to listen to; the band does keep some variety in their songs. Although PENS sort of missed the memo that people are sort of lo-fied out right now; we want bands that don't depend on noise or the fact that they're girls (Vivian Girls) to save their sound. In this case though, PENS gets a passing grade.
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