P:ano is not just a bizarre band name, but it refers to a band that is just as weird and unusual as the name might suggest. The chamber pop group, who have a sound somewhat similar to the product of an unholy union between Leonard Cohen, David McCormack, and Ben Folds, have been fixtures on the Vancouver indie scene for quite some time now. This album is their latest attempt at making a name for themselves on the wider stage, and while it's a record that definitely has some merit, it's not quite good or expansive enough to have wide appeal.

Now, chamber pop is not often a genre that's associated with sobriety and rigid structure, but in the case of "The Den", the music travels fully into the realm of the surreal. Take the opening track, with its title that can't be printed on a family website, which starts with some gentle piano, making it sound like something that you might hear in a classy bar of some sort. That's before the strings and percussion kick in, transforming it into a slow, slightly sad song, that still seems to be taking a good-humoured shot at the genre of music and themselves.

Mirthful humour seems to be the stock-in-trade of the band. Many of the songs presented here are dark, but they're presented with the sort of forced smile that you might expect from someone who's just had a loss in the family, but has just been told the funniest joke in the world. Take Working for instance, which starts as a plodding, gentle piano ballad, before a horrendously over the top vocal line comes in over the background, and then tell me that the band takes themselves particularly seriously. The band take some time to create echoing, sparse soundscapes, such as in Loud Son, between the tongue-in-cheek ballads, which prove that the band aren't just a one-trick act.

Unfortunately, while the particular style of music being performed is often moved around and changed, the tone and tempo of the album stay stuck in first gear over the whole album. It would have been nice to see the band slip in something that wasn't a slow, faintly sad song, but all thirteen songs here can be described perfectly that way.

Ultimately, "The Den" would be ten times better if there was a bit more variation in the themes over the whole album. That said, it's still a decent album with some nice songs, but nothing that'll blow your socks off, unfortunately.