Photo:
Be Your Own Pet are pretty much everything you should want from an American alternative band. Slicing guitars played by brooding young men with extravagantly volumised haircuts, driving machine-gun drumming which makes Keith Moon sound like a bit a wuss, led by a nubile bottle-blonde who sings like a dream-ticket of Debbie Harry and Courtney Love, and already has indie-boys wet-dreaming of being covered in her hot, steaming puke. Their tunes are short-sharp blasts of garage punk more akin to a smash-and-grab raid carried out with such infectious zest you can’t help eagerly handing over the goods with an insane grin on your face.
BYOP leave a trail of scorched ground behind them as they blister through the opening of their eponymous debut, which mercilessly crushes any grumbling resentment that the admittedly well-connected Nashville 18-year-olds have swept up a dust-ball of hype with a dry storm of style. ‘Thresher’s Flail’, ‘Bunk Trunk Skunk’ and stand-out forthcoming single ‘Bicycle, Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle’ form a thunderously, thumping triptych of white-hot noise which kicks in, speeds up, slows down then builds up to a frenzy - slapping the listener round the face throughout a pressure packed five and a half minutes.
Over all this, Jemina Pearl (great name, great voice) seductively whoops and wails away about “never having this much fun”, being “an independent motherfucker!” and “stealing away your virginity”. None of these sentiments broker any kind of argument. We’re finally allowed to snatch a breath five songs in with the (relatively) sedate new single ‘Adventure’. Although the song initially sounds pedestrian after the adrenalin rush of the album’s opening, it demonstrates BYOP are capable of taking things down a notch to offer up a tune reliant on more ‘conventional’ means if they want to.
It’s just, by and large, they don’t want to, and we’re soon pummelled back to the thrash. Whilst the meaty middle of the album doesn’t quite scale the heights of the album’s opening, there’s still plenty here to enjoy, not least Pearl’s urgently quirky lyrics, laced with a wicked sense of humour. On 'Bog' she races through, “I want a cat, my boyfriend wants a dog/ We got into a fight, I drowned him in a bog/ I’m sorry, I’m not sorry/ I’m sorry, I’M NOT SORRY!”. Indeed, as ‘cool’ as Be Your Own Pet may be at the moment, drawing comparisons with the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs and an amphetamine-fuelled The Strokes, they can never be accused of taking themselves seriously – they’re too busy celebrating the uninhibited sensory-overload of youth. Even though they may draw much inspiration from classic American garage bands such as The Stooges, whilst Iggy sang ‘No Fun’, BYOP offer up ‘Fuuuuuun’ instead.
Possibly pointing to the next stage of Be Your Own Pet’s exponential growth (and you would hope the teenagers are chomping at the bit to keep their ball rolling as fast as possible) they leave their longest to last, with the final four songs on the album clocking in at the previously unscaled and unthinkably epic three-minute mark. Like ‘Adventure’, ‘October, First Account’ shows off BYOP’s gentler side, sounding like a rockier version of The Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale, whilst ‘Love Your Shotgun’ and ‘Fill My Pill’ are wrapped up in Pearl’s two lyrical preoccupations – guns and medication.
None of the tunes outstay their welcome, but they aren’t quite as viscerally exciting as the short, sharp shocks which precede them, and it’s a shame the band couldn’t squeeze their explosive first single 'Damn Damn Leash' onto the album. Nit-picking aside though, Be Your Own Pet is an exhilaratingly impressive debut - an untamed animal straining at the leash to bite your arse off. If you’ve got any sense you’ll drop your trousers and happily bare your arse to its rabid charms.
