Be Your Own Pet - Be Your Own Pet

Genre rock Publisher Ecstatic Peace!/Universal Records External Links Official Be Your Own Pet Website Official Ecstatic Peace! Website

Chaotic punk teens Be Your Own Pet, have been causing quite a loud raucous around the music world lately with their hard hitting, ADD-riddled, self-titled debut album. Hailing from Nashville, Tennessee where country music reigns supreme, these young punks appear to have been destined for a long career of success, stage injuries, drugs and break ups. Each member of Be Your Own Pet has parents who were either themselves musicians or involved in the industry. Spending so much of their lives being around tour buses and rock stars seems to have prepped the band well for future rock stardom.

The album, released on Thurston (Sonic Youth) Moore's Ecstatic Peace! label, rips through fifteen loud, fast paced, punk rock tracks in about forty-five minutes and is a testament to old school punk's attitude and influence on modern tunage. BYOP play punk rock the way it is supposed to be played; that is, they've stripped off everything about punk that makes it a genre and gotten back to the original style of the movement. At a BYOP live show, you can expect the night to end with fans rushing on to the stage amid broken instruments. If any punk album has ever captured this essence, BYOP is it. In the spirit of their influences like The Misfits and The Sex Pistols, the band delivers an astonishing first album with all of the modern flair of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. In Fact, Karen O could very well be the fairy godmother of rowdy lead singer Jemina Pearl Abegg, with her hot yet "I don't give a fuck" attitude and reckless stage antics.

Abegg's father was a Christian rocker in his day but there is no evidence of this in her lyrics. She does, however, scream raunchy lines like, "I'm an independent mother fucker" and "I'm hear to steal away your virginity" as if to specifically disconnect from any notion that she might be soft. Also, in a random act of ballsy-ness, the band named a song "Stairway to Heaven" where Abegg mutters out the famous Led Zeppelin chorus before bursting into another chaotic frenzy.

Although the album is so fast it begins and ends before you may be able to finish your first beer, Be Your Own Pet's debut is fun while it lasts. Let's just assume that all of their early experience and the fact that they've known each other since the fifth grade will keep them together long enough to bless us with at least a few more furniture destroying albums.