Be Your Own Pet

Over the last six months these four teenagers from Nashville have been causing the sort of industry pant-wetting that has seen them plucked them from their local pizzeria and squeezed into a run of rammed shows, record deals and critical plaudits on both sides of the Atlantic. Not bad, I hear you murmur. Quite. But why?

Peppered by salivating industry types, Be Your Own Pet’s second gig in the UK is a stolid affair. The songs on offer (scuzzy garage rock by numbers) possess such hum-drum banality that DiS begins to wonder whether we’ve gone to the wrong venue and Thirteen Senses have drafted in a female singer and are attempting to ‘Rock Out™’. I’m all for bands having a sound and an identity, yet when recent single ‘Damn Damn Leash’ whistles by without the required clamour there is an overwhelming sense of “Right…next?” The leering blonde yapping away at the front is singer* Jemina Abegg* (she does sound a bit like Karen O, you're right) and as a focal point she might just be rather wonderful when her band gets a few more songs. With successful musicians, managers and photographers as parents, BYOP will undoubtedly be steered in the right/wrong direction.

Tonight, their fresh faced enthusiasm just doesn’t translate into the tunes. Their set becomes turgid very quickly. Strip back all the hype, lose the CMJ and SxSW triumphs and what you're left with might possibly be a decent little garage band (as a unit they seem to work together well) but that’s probably it. So again, why?

_ Photo by Sonia Melot_