Life > April 17, 2008

By Erik Forseth | Staff writer

When I first picked up Be Your Own Pet’s self-titled debut in the summer of 2006, it didn’t take long for that record to somehow become representative of that whole summer.

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I heard a lot of comparisons to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and while it was clear where those were coming from, I never thought they should have gone that far.

For one, BYOP didn’t have a shred of artistic pretension, and they didn’t seem to have the sort of control that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have even at their most chaotic moments.

Those qualities are good things at the hands of a band like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. With BYOP, though, their absence made the music utterly charming and natural. And so, raucous and enthusiastic as it was, it was the perfect summer record.

Get Awkward is not the same album. The band on this new outing is a much heavier and tighter unit. Lead singer Jemina Pearl sings, shouts, growls and hisses with more self-assurance than ever.

And yet, the band hasn’t grown up musically so much as grown into its influences. These friends of Sonic Youth (literally — Thurston Moore was one of their first fans and signed the band in 2006) echo all kinds of classic punk on the new LP. In fact, Jemina Pearl does a pretty good job at channeling X’s Exene Cervenka, albeit with a little more shrieking. X was a much artier affair, though, and so, as always, it’s tough to do a very good job at characterizing the group using comparisons.

Much of Get Awkward recalls bands like .45 Grave but without any of the morbidity.

Comparisons to Black Flag don’t seem too far off, except for the fact that listening to Pearl makes it hard to imagine Henry Rollins bellowing about being “Thirsty and Miserable.”

Either way, it’s no surprise that the lyric sheet isn’t the most emotionally intricate affair — Pearl sings about food fights and zombies.

When she gets to relationships, she’s hardly at her most compelling. And yet, she saves things from turning trite by being, well, hilarious: “You’re a Waste,” which starts out sounding like a pretty serious tune, sports the funniest line of the album: “Well go ahead and tell your sob story / All I have to say about it is b**w me.” And how sweet is “Bummer Time”? This might be the most strictly classicist punk rock song on the album. Its syncopated, shout-along choruses — think of the Chili Peppers’ “Catholic School Girls Rule” — surround passionate verses from Pearl.

“Zombie Graveyard Party” is just as good. The band locks into an intensely rhythmic and infectious groove as Pearl implores the listener to “let me eat your brain.” By the time they launch into “We could party, party in the graveyard tonight,” it’s hard not to suspect that BYOP wanted to rewrite Black Flag’s “TV Party” for a new generation and with a healthy dose of camp.

While BYOP’s first album was hardly deep, there were definite touches of maturity. “October, First Account” stood out.

The song was dynamic and intense, and while it wasn’t quite great, it was a pretty stunning attempt at greatness. It was the only song of its kind on the album, and I’m a bit disappointed that there’s nothing of the sort on Get Awkward.

That’s not such a bad thing — after all, I’m not sure where a song like that would fit in. For now, BYOP prefer simply to rock, and that’s fine by me.