BYOP rock so awkwardly

By Nate Adams
Collegian Editor
April 9, 2008

Once upon a time, there were a bunch of high school kids who got together and started a band. Unlike that band you and your friend Cyrus started in high school, these guys not only wrote catchy rock songs, but they practiced the hell out of them, making them as tight and concise as they could.

Still, these cats were only 18, so their live shows had certain energy to them that carried over, no matter how tight the songs were. Not to mention, this band was fronted by a blonde bombshell channeling all the “f-you” energy of 10,000 riot grrls.

So anyway, this band, named Be Your Own Pet, put out a self titled album on a small label, did the summer festival circuit and ended up getting signed to a major and putting out a second able, awesomely titled Get Awkward.

Seeing as there was only a one year lapse between the band’s first and second albums, not to mention that the folks behind the album are only 18 years old, there isn’t all that much maturity and growth on this second record; it’s not that different from their first.

Still, the people who love this band aren’t spinning them for their brilliant wordplay or biting social commentary. The strength of Be Your Own Pet is in their adolescent, snot-nosed worship of classic rock, and their brash attempt at re-creating the spark that caused a punk explosion back in the ’60s.

The album kicks off with “Super Soaked,” a guitar-heavy scream track before giving way to “The Kelly Affair,” a song about the dangers of being young and famous in L.A. “It could be dangerous living in the valley/everybody here parties all the time/everybody here has sex on their minds.”

Lead singer, spark plug, primary song-writer and possible sex symbol Jemina Pearl spits, growls and shrieks with a kind of wild confidence that is inherent in all the awesome rock-ladies of history. Her song topics range from bitchy chicks (on the aptly named “Bitches Leave”) to unrequited love/lust interests (the slightly uncomfortable “Heart Throb”). Still, these topics are delivered in a very childish, if not charming way.

So if you totally, like, dig Stooges-era pre-punk, or if you are all about, like, high school kids making rock music or whatever, you should like, totally Get Awkward.

adamsn1@lasalle.edu