Pages tagged “be your own pet”

Following the sad news that Be Your Own Pet will soon cease to be a band, we dug up this amusing conversation with BYOP singer Jemina Pearl. Enjoy.

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If girls are really made of sugar, spice and everything nice, please don’t tell Jemina Pearl. The petite 20-year-old lead singer of Be Your Own Pet just might punch you in the face.

For sophomore album, young punks beef up sound without shedding scrappiness

On Be Your Own Pet’s debut, the Nashville teens sounded like a Muppety thrash-punk version of Yeah Yeah Yeahs or The Gossip. It would be misleading to say they’ve grown up: Thematically, Get Awkward still revolves around teenage anarchy, teenage apathy, bad drugs, fun parties, stupid boys, cute boys, preppy girls and brain-eating, and lead singer Jemina Pearl’s caterwaul is still terrifically bratty. But, musically, they’re well beyond their years, augmenting their paroxysmal tantrums with sturdy touches of glam, cock rock, ’70s metal and points outlying. Particularly format-breaking and fantastic is the unlikely pop confection “Becky,” a high-school murder melodrama that successfully weds BYOP’s signature rawness with classic girl-group content and style. While the band is ferocious and tight, Pearl in particular has attained force-of-nature caliber formidability, not just in the burgeoning mastery of her commanding rapid-fire squeal, but in her frankly sexual gaze and world-devouring disdain for all things not awesome.

Know that feeling you get when you're silently riding in an elevator with your boss? Or when a fellow moviegoer mistakes your pants tent for a masculine reflex, causing a Larry David moment?

The rowdy Nashville noise poppers of Be Your Own Pet recently confirmed that they will pay tribute to those uncomfortable moments on their forthcoming sophomore LP, Get Awkward. Numerous media outlets are reporting that the album drops mid-March.

The track list for the album is below. Lead singer Jemina Pearl tells Rolling Stone that "Bitches Leave" is a nod to Robocop. Nice?

The track listing:
1. Super Soaked
2. Black Hole
3. Heart Throb
4. Becky
5. The Kelly Affair
6. Twisted Nerve
7. Blow Yr Mind
8. Bummer Time
9. Bitches Leave
10. You're a Waste
11. Food Fight!
12. Zombie Graveyard Party
13. What's Your Damage
14. Creepy Crawl
15. The Beast Within

Related links:
BeYourOwnPet.net
Be Your Own Pet on MySpace
Paste: Be Your Own Pet: Advanced-Placement Rock

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Talk about precocious. As a gradeschooler, Jemina Pearl Abegg crisscrossed the country on summer vacation, on tour with her father Jimmy’s outfit, Vector. With dad’s encouragement she formed her own awkwardly tagged band, Be Your Own Pet, three years ago (the whim hit while bouncing around on a backyard trampoline, she swears) and she’s since gone on to:

1. Climb BBC Radio charts with her very first single “Damn Damn Leash”
2. Tour the U.K., continental Europe and even a curiously BYOP- obsessed Japan
3. Release a brilliant, eponymous full-length debut on Ecstatic Peace, the Universal-distributed imprint of BYOP booster, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.

And all before Abegg turned 19. Why so serious about music so young? “We’re not really serious about it yet,” giggles the blonde lead singer, adjusting the strap on her George Romero/Land Of The Dead baseball cap (she composed an ode to zombies called “Ouch” on Be Your Own Pet, alongside other snarled/crooned anthems like “Wildcat!,” “Bunk Trunk Skunk” and “Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle.”)

“Well, I guess we’re serious about it,” she clarifies, “but we don’t take things very seriously. And we still live with our parents—we don’t really have a reason to move out, just ’cause I’m always on tour, and I’m not gonna be home that often anyway.” Drummer Jamin Orrall is the son of folk-pop musician Robert Ellis Orrall, who co-produced BYOP’s early demos. Did the industry-steeped folks warn their kids to stay away from shady showbiz or offer tips and encouragement? “Neither, really,” says Abegg. “We make our own decisions, and we make mistakes like they made mistakes. But our parents are there if we ever need ’em, and if I want advice I can always go ask.”