Be Your Own Pet: Get Awkward : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Be Your Own Pet's young hellion Jemina Pearl has a new tattoo on her biceps: the girl from Friday the Thirteenth with a bloody hatchet in her forehead. Obviously, you do not mess with Pearl — and BYOP's riotously excellent Get Awkward is packed with reasons to cross the street when you see her coming. As on Be Your Own Pet's 2006 full-length debut, these Nashville skate-punk kids go for noisy hardcore blasts in the mode of Black Flag, SS Decontrol and the Germs. This time Pearl's scream is deeper and meaner, some songs have actual choruses, and Tony Alva look-alike Jonas Stein revs up some rockabilly guitar riffs — they must have been YouTubing a lot of X and Buzzcocks clips lately. But BYOP remain blissfully bored by the idea of lyrical or musical subtlety, which is why they're so perfect. They celebrate teen romance ("You're a Waste"), girl fights ("Bitches Leave"), mindless violence ("Zombie Graveyard Party") and trash TV (the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls tribute "The Kelly Affair"). Pearl sounds genuinely freaked out in the disconcerting "Creepy Crawl" ("I'm not the girl that I was before/Feel like I'm lying each time I walk through the door"). And for mature sophistication, there's "Food Fight!"