Be Your Own Pet – Get Awkward

Get Awkward – Be Your Own Pet

By Chris Peken

This little quartet may hail from Nashville but don’t start thinking Johnny Cash and June Carter yet. This is all-ahead, full-throttle guitars and snarly punk attitude of a four-piece just starting to grow from teenagers into “young adults” with plenty of disdain and still a good amount of youthful enthusiasm. Jemina Pearl Abegg’s vocals out the front of the three boys provides a much needed oestrogen implant to a testosterone over-loaded genre, making Be Your Own Pet a cross between The Donnas and Black Flag. Mostly this energy is well focused on the subjects of their attention – youthful crushes – Heart Throb – boredom – Creepy Crawl – and a little bit of self-hatred – The Beast Within – allowing the band and Jemina to head on down the same path at a million miles an hour without derailing. Occasional lapses like Bummer Time can be forgiven on the whole as Get Awkward is a title explaining how they continue to learn how to be a band – and this is something they are generally succeeding in very well. B+.

*** 1/2