Now I wanna be your own pet.
There are touches of Iggy Pop on album opener ‘Super Soaked’ where lead singer Jemima Pearl makes reference to an upcoming birthday and how life is likely to turn out for her. The Stooges feel is carried over into the music and the track is a manic ball of energy with the drums flailing and the guitar riff snipping and shrieking at every possibility whilst the lead singer indicates she will not be calming down at any point and that the world should expect more of the same from the singer and no doubt the band.
It’s the sort of album opener that sets the scene for the entire record and this is proven when the next track ‘Black Hole’ follows on in the same rushing energy and drive, with this song perhaps being even more up-tempo and frantic.
Be Your Own Pet exploded onto the scene a few years back with such a burst of youthful energy and a whole lot of great hair that there was always going to be concern over how they would manage to keep the drive they showed on their debut but ‘Get Awkward’ shows no sign of any direction change.
The band are still young so the songs are based on love going right, love going wrong and love not being recognised at all and sometimes it happens in the matter of a few verses. ‘Heart Throb’ is the song for unrequited love for the punk kids, ‘Twisted Nerve’ is the song after love has gone wrong and the things that a girl can do to get back at the guy who broke her heart and ‘You’re A Waste’ is the number for the times when love never materialises but it turns out to be okay anyway.
However, it is not all about matters of the flesh and ‘Becky’ manages to slow matters down slightly but increases the intimidation factor and its fair to say that you wouldn’t like to end up on the bad side of Jemima. The chorus is as poppy as you would like but the lyrics talk about beating people up and having no regrets kicking peoples ass and is the perfect link between snot-nosed Ramones punk to the dark and sarcastic laden put-downs of the 60s girl groups. For a bunch of youngsters, Be Your Own Pet have been clearly listening to the classics and there is a strong sense of rock and roll history throughout the record that maybe lacks originality but pushes all the right buttons.
‘Get Awkward’ is a good continuation of the sound that the band developed on their first record which means that it is no great leap forward but for all that, it’s a poppy, punky and sure to be very popular album. The live shows by the band were a chaotic frenzy of noise and squalor and whilst there is definitely a more song-based approach on the new material it can still be seen that the anger and aggression is going to remain in their live shows. Which is great because there is plenty of time for Be Your Own Pet to change musical direction so you might as well as enjoy the youthful vigour that the band has to show on this album. That and its hard to argue with an album that has a chorus that runs “Love is lame so let me eat your brain.”