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Pens
Hey Friend! What You Doing
De Stijl IND-071
LP
£13.99
Debut album from this London-based girl trio who make the kind of glorious no-fi avant punk noise that would combine the melodic garage doofs of Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls with the post-ESP Disk exuberance of the whole Circuit Des Yeux/Cro Magnon scene. Suckdog and The Shaggs are the twin poles around which much of the contemporary DIY girl punk kinda hangs and their lessons have obviously been fully internalized by this bunch. The drums have a particular stagger to them that makes it feel like the main formal model is the percussion break during “Who Are Parents” and Pens have a similarly attention-deficit style to the best of The Shaggs material, with choruses beamed from Venus that inexplicably give way to droning casiotone breaks and cranky fuzz-guitar ballads that once might’ve been Azalia Snail taking off into the destructo style of Half Japanese. The whole deal is rendered with such infectious élan that it’s almost impossible to resist and with such an impeccable feel for the aesthetics of basement noise it’s hard to believe that they could possibly be British. But they fucking are. So bring it on.
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